UC-NRLF 


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CORNELL   STUDIES    IN    PHILOSOPHY 
No.  9 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM 

OF 

KANT'S  Theory  of  Experience 


RADOSLAV  A   TSANOFF,  A.B. 

FORMERLY   SCHOLAR   AND    FELLOW    IN   THE   SAGE   SCHOOL   OF   PHILOSOPHY 


A  THESIS 

Presented  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School 

OF  Cornell  University  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy 

May,  1910 

I  vmv 
Neto  ¥ork  ^^^J 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,   &  COMPANY 
Fourth  Avenue  and  Thirtieth  Street 

LONDON         BOMBAY        CALCUTTA 
I9II 


CORNELL   STUDIES    IN    PHILOSOPHY 
No.  9 


SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM 

OF 

Kant's  Theory  of  Experience 


RADOSLAV  a".  TSANOFF,  A.B. 

FORMERLY  SCHOLAR  AND  FELLOW  IN  THE  SAGE  SCHOOL  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


A  THESIS 

Presented  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate  School 

OF  Cornell  University  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy 

May,  1910 


Neb)  ¥tirfe 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  &  COMPANY 

Fourth  Avenue  and  Thirtieth  Street 

LONDON         BOMBAY        CALCUTTA 

I9II 


Pkess  of 
r  era  printing  compant 
lancaster,  pa. 


PREFACE. 

The  writer  has  found  the  literature  on  Schopenhauer  in  English 
comparatively  meagre  on  the  technical  side,  particularly  with 
respect  to  Schopenhauer's  criticism  of  the  Kantian  philosophy. 
Professor  Caldwell's  article  on  "Schopenhauer's  Criticism  of 
Kant"  in  Mind  (Vol.  XVI,  1891,  pp.  355-374)  is,  of  course, 
a  direct  contribution  to  the  subject,  but,  in  his  bulky  volume, 
Schopenhauer's  System  in  its  Philosophical  Significance  (New 
York,  1896),  Professor  Caldwell  does  not  discuss  in  any  detail 
Schopenhauer's  "opinions  upon  Kant  and  Kant's  works"  (p.  x), 
believing  quite  seriously  "not  only  that  Schopenhauer  himself 
made  little  serious  attempt  to  correlate  his  own  thought  with  any 
other  system  in  existence  (save  perhaps  the  Kantian  philosophy), 
but  that  he  did  not  care  in  the  least  to  be  understood"  (p.  35). 
The  articles  containing  the  controversy  between  J.  Hutchison 
Stirling  and  Edward  Caird  concerning  Schopenhauer's  inter- 
pretation and  criticism  of  Kant,  particularly  with  respect  to 
the  deduction  of  the  categories,  in  the  Journal  of  Speculative 
Philosophy  {Vo\.yil\\,^p.i-^o,  215-220;  Vol.  XIV,  pp.  49-134, 
353-376),  comprise,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  the  longest 
discussion  in  English  of  problems  directly  connected  with 
the  subject  of  the  present  investigation.  But  Caird's  articles 
are  concerned  mainly  with  explaining  his  own  interpretation  of 
Kant,  and  lay  little  stress  upon  Schopenhauer's  particular 
criticisms;  whereas  Stirling's  articles,  written  in  a  too  contro- 
versial spirit  and  full  of  irrelevant  personal  disputation,  fail, 
I  think,  to  approach  the  problem  from  a  significant  point  of 
view.  Professor  Colvin's  thesis,  Schopenhauer's  Doctrine  oj  the 
Thing-in-itselJ  and  His  Attempt  to  Relate  It  to  the  World  of 
Phenomena  (Providence,  1897),  contains  a  discussion  of  that 
problem  from  an  historical  point  of  view,  but  I  have  had  no 
occasion  to  make  direct  use  of  it.  Professor  Wallace's  Life  of 
Arthur  Schopenhauer  (London,  1890),  in  the  Great  Writers  series, 


i28205 


iv  PREFACE. 

is  much  the  best  book  on  Schopenhauer  that  has  appeared  in 
EngHsh.  Wallace's  portrayal  of  Schopenhauer  is  admirable,  and 
the  book  as  a  whole  is  as  good  an  introduction  to  Schopenhauer's 
philosophy  as  could  well  be  desired.  But,  of  course,  it  is  no  more 
than  a  brief  introduction  can  be,  and  is  not  concerned  with  the 
technical  treatment  of  Schopenhauer's  criticism  of  Kant. 

Of  the  standard  works  on  Schopenhauer  in  German  and  French, 
few  contain  any  at  all  extended  treatment  of  his  relation  to 
Kant.  In  Kuno  Fischer's  systematic  study  of  his  philosophy, 
Arthur  Schopenhauer,  in  his  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophie, 
Vol.  VIII  (Heidelberg,  1893),  only  a  few  pages  are  devoted  to 
the  technical  treatment  of  our  particular  problem ;  and  Johannes 
Volkelt,  in  his  lucidly  written  volume,  Arthur  Schopenhauer, 
seine  Personlichkeit,  seine  Lehre,  sein  Glaube  (Stuttgart,  1900),  in 
Frommanns  Klassiker  der  Philosophie,  while  having  the  Critical 
point  of  view  clearly  in  mind  in  his  analysis  of  Schopenhauer's 
epistemology,  is  nevertheless  concerned  chiefly  with  Schopen- 
hauer's own  position,  and  does  not  therefore  discuss  in  detail  the 
significance  of  Schopenhauer's  criticism  of  Kant's  philosophy. 
Ribot's  La  philosophie  de  Schopenhauer  (Paris,  1890)  and  Bos- 
sert's  Schopenhauer,  Vhomme  et  le  philosophe  (Paris,  1904)  each 
devote  a  chapter  to  a  brief  outline  of  the  "Appendix"  to  The 
World  as  Will  and  Idea. 

There  are  several  monographs  having  a  more  or  less  direct 
bearing  upon  the  subject  of  the  present  study.  I  should  mention 
first  of  all  Dr.  Raoul  Richter's  dissertation,  Schopenhauer's 
Verhdltnis  zu  Kant  in  seinen  Grundziigen  (Leipzig,  1893),  a  study 
which,  in  painstaking  analysis,  keenness  of  penetration,  and 
lucidity  of  exposition,  already  promised  what  that  scholarly 
author  has  fulfilled  in  his  later  works.  Dr.  Richter  approaches 
the  problem  by  contrasting  Kant  and  Schopenhauer  as  men, 
thinkers,  and  writers,  and  exhibiting  a  corresponding  contrast 
between  their  systems.  The  technical  nature  of  my  own  study 
has  led  me  to  lay  less  stress  upon  the  psychological  aspects  of  the 
problem,  and  to  consider  rather  the  inherent  incompatibility 
of  the  two  systems  themselves.  I  regret  that  I  did  not  have 
access  to  Dr.  Richter's  dissertation  until  after  my  work  had  been 


PREFACE.  V 

nearly  completed.  Nevertheless,  I  have  made  occasional  refer- 
ences to  his  views  in  the  footnotes.  Georg  Albert's  Kant's 
transscendentale  Logik,  mit  besonderer  Berucksichtigung  der  Scho- 
penhauer schen  Kritik  der  Kantischen  Philosophie(Wien,  1895)  is  a 
well  written  and  very  suggestive  monograph.  Mscislaw  Warten- 
berg's  articles,  "Der  Begrifif  des  'transscendentalen  Gegenstandes' 
bei  Kant — und  Schopenhauers  Kritik  desselben  :  Eine  Recht- 
fertigung  Kants,"  in  Kantstudien  (Vol.  IV,  pp.  202-231;  Vol.  V, 
pp.  145-176),  contain  a  systematic  discussion  of  that  particular 
problem,  and  show  a  thorough  grasp  of  some  fundamental  issues. 

References  could  be  made,  of  course,  to  many  other  books  on 
Schopenhauer,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  they  have  no  very 
direct  bearing  upon  our  special  problem.  It  has  not  been  my 
intention  to  give  here  a  list  of  the  books  which  I  have  had 
occasion  to  use.  I  merely  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  better  known  writers  on  Schopenhauer  have  not  given  his 
criticism  of  Kant's  theory  of  experience  the  share  of  attention 
which  I  think  it  deserves. 

In  making  references  to  Schopenhauer's  works,  the  Grisebach 
edition  of  the  Werke,  in  Reclam's  Universal-Bibliothek  (Leipzig, 
6  volumes)  has  been  used  throughout.  The  inaccurate  and  un- 
reliable character  of  Frauenstadt's  edition,  formerly  regarded  as 
the  standard,  has  been  pointed  out  by  many  recent  writers  on 
Schopenhauer,  and  Grisebach's  edition  has  gained  in  popularity. 
(C/.  Kuno  Fischer,  op.  cit.,  pp.  140-146;  Bossert,  op.  cit.,  pp. 
vi-vii;  Paulsen,  Schopenhauer,  Hamlet,  Mephistopheles,  Berlin, 
1900,  p.  3.  Volkelt,  op.  cit.,  p.  359,  also  refers  to  the  "muster- 
giiltigen"  edition  of  Grisebach.)  Quotations  from  The  World  as 
Will  and  Idea  are  given  according  to  the  admirable  English 
translation  by  R.  B.  Haldane  and  J.  Kemp  (fourth  edition, 
London,  1896),  in  The  English  and  Foreign  Philosophical  Library . 
The  references  to  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  are  to  the  first 
edition  unless  otherwise  stated ;  cross-references  are  always  given 
to  Max  MuUer's  translation  (second  edition.  New  York,  1896), 
which  has  been  used  for  the  quotations. 

I  wish  to  express  my  gratitude  to  Professors  J.  E.  Creighton, 
W.  A.  Hammond,  and  Frank  Thilly,  of  The  Sage  School  of 


vi  PREFACE. 

Philosophy,  for  valuable  suggestions  and  generous  help  in  the 
course  of  my  work.  Professor  Thilly  also  kindly  allowed  me  access 
to  his  collection  of  Schopenhauer  literature.  Above  all,  however, 
I  am  profoundly  indebted  to  the  sympathetic  guidance  and 
helpful  criticism  of  Professor  Ernest  Albee,  who  is  largely  respon- 
sible for  whatever  this  monograph  may  possess  of  logical  coher- 
ence and  technical  accuracy,  though  not,  of  course,  for  the  par- 
ticular views  expressed.  I  wish  also  to  thank  Professor  S.  F. 
MacLennan,  of  Oberlin  College,  my  first  teacher  in  philosophy, 
who  introduced  me  to  the  study  of  both  Kant  and  Schopenhauer, 
for  his  kindness  in  looking  over  the  proofs. 

Radoslav  a.  Tsanoff. 

New  York  City, 
May,  1911. 


CONTENTS. 

Page 
Introduction ix 

Chapter    I. 

The   Nature   and   Genesis   of   Experience:  Perception   and 
Conception i 

Chapter   II. 

The  Principles  of  Organization  in  Experience:  The  Deduc- 
tion and  the  Real  Significance  of  the  Categories 23 

Chapter   III. 

The    Scope    and    Limits    of    Experience:    Transcendental 
Dialectic 43 

Chapter   IV. 
Experience  and  Reality:  The  Will  as  the  Thing-in-itself . .     62 


INTRODUCTION. 

Schopenhauer's  interpretation  and  criticism  of  Kant's  theory 
■of  experience  is  also  an  indispensable  commentary  upon  the 
technical  side  of  his  own  philosophical  system,  and  for  this  reason 
alone  would  deserve  more  serious  attention  than  it  has  generally 
received.  That  Schopenhauer  professes  to  base  his  own  philos- 
ophy directly  upon  that  of  Kant, — or  upon  that  part  of  the 
Critical  philosophy  which  he  approves  of, — must  be  evident  to 
all  readers  of  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea.  His  scornful  re- 
pudiation of  the  other  Post-Kantians  is  almost  as  evident  as  his 
reverence  for  the  master,  when  he  says  in  the  Preface:  "The 
philosophy  of  Kant  ...  is  the  only  philosophy  with  which  a 
thorough  acquaintance  is  directly  presupposed  in  what  we  have 
to  say  here."^ 

But,  though  Schopenhauer  is  fond  of  representing  himself  as 
the  true  successor  of  Kant,  he  is  anything  but  a  mere  disciple  of  the 
older  philosopher.  His  thoroughgoing  criticism  of  Kant's  theory 
of  experience,  at  once  highly  technical  and  decidedly  unconven- 
tional, is  generally  suggestive  and  often  illuminating,  even  where 
it  signally  fails  to  offer  adequate  solutions  of  the  problems 
considered.  As  might  be  expected,  Schopenhauer  shows  little 
capacity  for  sympathetic  interpretation.  His  style  is  almost 
invariably  controversial,  his  point  of  view  always  distinctly  his 
own.  To  reinterpret  and  rectify  Kant  in  the  spirit  of  his  own 
epistemological  phenomenalism  and  voluntaristic  metaphysics, 
and,  while  laying  bare  the  inconsistencies  of  his  master,  clearly 
to  indicate  the  inevitableness  of  his  own  proffered  solutions,  and 
thus  establish  firmly  the  grounds  of  his  claim  that  between  Kant 
and  himself  nothing  has  been  done  in  philosophy  and  that  he  is 
Kant's  immediate  successor, — these  are  the  aims  of  the  Appendix 

1  G.,  I,  p.  13;  H.K.,  I,  p.  xii.  For  the  sake  of  convenience,  Grisebach's  edition 
of  Schopenhauer's  works  is  referred  to  as  G.,  Haldane  and  Kemp's  translation  of 
The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  as  H.K.,  the  first  edition  of  the  Krilik  der  reinen  Ver- 
nunft,  as  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  and  Max  MuUer's  translation,  as  M.  The  other  references 
are  self-explanatory. 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

to  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  which  contains  the  major  portion 
of  Schopenhauer's  systematic  criticism  of  the  Kantian  philosophy. 
It  is  as  an  apologist  for  and  defender  of  Kant  at  his  best,  and 
often  against  himself,  that  Schopenhauer  constantly  addresses 
himself  to  his  readers.  He  would  free  Kant's  philosophy  from 
its  excrescences  and  show  its  essential  meaning;  he  would  expose 
the  charlatanry  of  the  university  professors  who  have  distorted 
the  master's  doctrine.  His  own  system  is  intended  not  so  much 
to  supersede  as  to  complete  Kant's  work;  for  the  essential  prin- 
ciples of  Kantianism,  he  always  insists,  can  never  be  superseded. 
Perhaps  the  most  convenient  way  to  indicate  the  general  spirit 
of  Schopenhauer's  interpretation  of  the  Kantian  philosophy  will 
be  to  state  briefly  what  he  considered  to  be  Kant's  three  incon- 
testable achievements  in  the  quest  of  truth. ^  Kant's  greatest 
merit  in  philosophy  Schopenhauer  finds  in  the  fact  that  he  dis- 
tinguished clearly  between  the  phenomenon  and  the  thing-in- 
itself.  The  inner  nature  of  reality  is  hidden  from  our  knowledge 
by  the  intercepting  intellect;  our  experience  is  fundamentally 
'intellectual.'  In  reaching  this  momentous  conclusion,  Kant 
clearly  formulated  and  carried  out  to  its  logical  results  a  doctrine 
already  implicit  in  Locke's  Essay  concerning  Human  Under- 
standing. Locke  explained  the  so-called  'secondary  qualities' 
of  things  as  mere  affections  of  the  senses.  This  line  of  argu- 
ment, which  Locke  had  employed  only  in  the  case  of  the  'sec- 
ondary qualities,'  Berkeley  and  Hume  extended  to  the  whole 
range  of  experience.  Berkeley,  as  Schopenhauer  says,  first 
showed  himself  in  earnest  with  the  subjective  standpoint,  and 
may  thus  be  regarded  as  "the  originator  of  the  proper  and  true 
Idealism, "2  in  that  he  shows  the  identity  of  existence  and  per- 
ceptibility. But  Berkeley  did  not  know  where  to  find  the  Real,^ 
and  borrowed  from  theology  the  notion  of  spiritual  substance, 
while  rejecting  that  of  material  substance.  Hume,  making  a 
more  consistent  and  thoroughgoing  application  of  the  method 

•  The  following  outline  will  adhere  in  the  main  to  Schopenhauer's  order  in  the 
"Criticism  of  the  Kantian  Philosophy,"  as  given  in  the  "Appendix"  to  The  World 
as  Will  and  Idea. 

'  G.,  IV,  p.  26;  Bax,  Schopenhauer's  Essays,  in  Bohn's  Library,  p.  13. 

3G.,  IV,  p.  26;  Bax,  p.  14. 


INTRODUCTION.  Xl 

which  Berkeley  had  followed  to  the  extent  of  disproving  the 
existence  of  material  substance,  showed  that  the  notion  of  spir- 
itual substance  was  equally  untenable.  Moreover,  his  destruc- 
tive analysis  of  the  law  of  causality  led  him  to  the  conclusion 
that  no  necessary  connection  obtained  in  experience. 

Kant,  correcting  the  conclusions  which  Hume  had  drawn 
from  his  wider  application  of  the  Lockean  method,  indicated  the 
real  significance  of  the  empirical  point  of  view  and  systematized 
the  results  of  British  empiricism.  That  is  to  say,  Kant  reinter- 
preted the  meaning  of  these  results;  for  him  they  did  not  lead, 
as  they  did  for  Hume,  to  any  sceptical  conclusions  con- 
cerning experience.  He  first  brought  out  clearly  the  general 
implications  of  the  idealistic  point  of  view, — a  thing  which  Berke- 
ley had  been  unable  to  do,  because  of  the  narrowness  of  his 
line  of  attack,  confined  as  that  was  to  one  point. ^  The  distinc- 
tion between  phenomena  and  things-in-themselves,  and  the 
necessary  limitation  of  experience  to  the  former, — principles 
which  now  for  the  first  time  were  consistently  formulated, — 
revealed  the  half-hidden  meaning  of  dimly  felt  truths  in  Plato 
and  the  Vedic  writers;  they  showed  at  the  same  time  the  funda- 
mentally false  starting-point  of  Kant's  rationalistic  predecessors, 
with  their  demand  for  'eternal  truths.'  The  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  these  truths  themselves  had  their  origin  and  basis  in 
the  human  mind,  and  that  their  supposedly  absolute  validity 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  restricted  to  phenomenal  experience, 
shook  the  very  foundations  of  pre-Kantian  dogmatism.  No 
wonder  that  Mendelssohn,  'the  last  of  the  sleepers,'  called 
Kant  "den  Alleszermalmer."^  This  is  the  Copernican  reversal 
of  method  which  Kant  inaugurated.  Instead  of  starting  with 
certain  ultimate  and  immutable  truths,  as  the  rationalists  had 
done,  Kant  took  these  truths  themselves  as  problems,  and, 
by  discovering  their  real  source  in  the  human  mind,  and  their 
purely  experiential  validity,  laid  the  foundations  of  a  real 
philosophy  of  experience.'  His  theory  of  knowledge,  however, 
involved  a  frank  recognition  of  the  fact  that  our  experience  con- 

iG..  I,  p.  542;  H.K.,  II,  p.  15. 

^G..  I,  p.  S37;H.  K.,  II.  p.  9. 

'  Cf.  G.,  I,  pp.  537  f.;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  9  ff. 


Xll  INTROD  UCTION. 

cerns  only  phenomena,  and  does  not  extend  to  things-in-them- 
selves. 

A  second  immortal  achievement  of  the  Critical  Philosophy^ 
according  to  Schopenhauer,  is  its  assertion  of  the  primacy  of 
the  Will.  For  Kant,  the  nature  of  the  thing-in-itself  remained 
in  a  large  measure  an  untouched  problem.  Yet,  in  so  far  as  he 
established  its  non-intellectual  character,  and,  furthermore, 
explained  the  undeniably  metaphysical  significance  of  human 
action  as  passing  beyond  the  pale  of  the  phenomenal, — in  so  far 
Schopenhauer  thinks  that  Kant  was  dimly  conscious  of  that  truth 
which  he  himself  was  the  first  clearly  to  expound  and  formulate, 
the  truth,  namely,  that  the  Will  is  the  Weltprincip.  That  this 
truth  of  all  truths  should  have  been  implicitly  present  in  Kant's 
thought,  Schopenhauer  regards  as  a  deeply  significant  fact,  in 
that  it  connects  his  own  philosophy  with  that  of  Kant. 

The  third  permanent  result  of  Kant's  philosophy,  Schopenhauer 
thinks,  is  its  complete  refutation  of  Scholasticism,  which  had 
treated  philosophy  as  ancillary  to  theology  and  had  dominated 
the  thought  of  almost  every  philosopher  since  Augustine,  Gior- 
dano Bruno  and  Spinoza  being  the  notable  exceptions.  The 
deathblow  which  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  dealt  to  the  rational- 
istic psychology,  cosmology,  and  theology  was  salutary  alike 
to  philosophy  and  to  natural  science;  it  liberated  both  from  the 
shackles  of  creed-prejudice  and  allowed  philosophical  investi- 
gation free  play  in  its  search  after  truth. ^ 

The  salient  points  of  Schopenhauer's  appreciative  introduction 
to  his  criticism  of  Kant's  philosophy  have  been  noted  briefly. 
The  problems  it  raises,  touching  as  they  do  epistemology,  meta- 
physics, and  theology,  and  suggesting  the  tenor  of  Schopenhauer's 
whole  philosophy,  cannot  be  considered  to  advantage  until 
after  a  detailed  examination  of  what  Schopenhauer  asserts  to 
be  Kant's  epistemological  errors,  and  a  discussion  of  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  his  own  philosophy,  which  he  invariably 
advocates  as  offering  the  only  logical  solution  of  every  real 
Kantian  problem.  It  will  be  well,  however,  to  keep  in  mind 
from  the  very  start  these  three  conclusions  of  Kant's  philosophy, 

'C/.  G.,  IV,  pp.  ii8ff. 


INTROD  UCTION.  xiil 

which  Schopenhauer  regards  as  most  significant  and,  indeed,  as 
incontrovertible,  (i)  Philosophy  must  recognize  the  purely 
phenomenal  character  of  knowledge.  This  indicates,  positively, 
the  phenomenalistic  character  of  Schopenhauer's  own  epis- 
temology;  negatively,  it  opens  the  door  to  illusionism.  (2) 
Philosophy  must  realize  the  primacy  of  Will  over  Reason.  Posi- 
tively, again,  this  may  be  interpreted  as  an  insistence  upon  the  dy- 
namic nature  of  experience,  as  opposed  to  the  contrary  tendency 
of  rationalism.  Negatively, — and  it  is  the  negative  side  that 
is  unduly  prominent  in  Scopenhauer's  own  system, — the  recog- 
nition of  the  primacy  of  the  Will  leads  to  the  dogmatic  assertion 
of  the  ultimately  irrational  character  of  reality,  and  points 
to  a  pessimistic  conclusion.  (3)  Philosophy  must  be  kept 
distinct  from  theology.  This  means  the  rejection  of  any  tran- 
scendent principles  of  explanation,  and  the  repudiation  of  all 
dogmatism.  These  three  aspects  of  Kant's  philosophy,  as  inter- 
preted by  Schopenhauer,  are  merely  indicated  here.  To  analyze 
them  closely  and  to  inquire  into  their  consistency  and  philo- 
sophical significance,  as  well  as  to  determine  as  nearly  as  possible 
their  historical  value  as  interpretations  of  Kant's  philosophy, 
will  be  the  object  of  this  study. 


CHAPTER   I. 

The  Nature  and  Genesis  of  Experience: 
Perception  and  Conception. 

The  problem  of  the  relative  functions  of  Perception  and  Con- 
ception in  the  genesis  of  experience  raises  the  fundamental  epis- 
temological  issue  which  split  early  modern  philosophy  in  twain, 
and  the  partial  solution  of  which  is  one  of  the  most  substantial 
achievements  of  modern  logic.  At  the  dawn  of  modern  philos- 
ophy we  find  the  old  scholastic  dispute  of  Nominalism  vs. 
Realism  assuming  a  new  form.  The  rationalistic  world  of  'eter- 
nal truths,'  while  having  a  certain  abstract  coherence  of  its  own, 
lacks  any  vital  relation  to  the  flesh-and-blood  world  of  sense- 
experience.  If  the  actual  facts  are  not  in  accord  with  its  concep- 
tual scheme,  then,  Schopenhauer  says,  experience  is  "given 
to  understand  that  it  knows  nothing  of  the  matter  and 
ought  to  hold  its  tongue  when  philosophy  has  spoken  a 
priori.''^  The  revolt  against  this  worship  of  the  abstract  uni- 
versal was  represented  by  empiricism,  which  grounded  its  truths 
in  sense-experience  and  sought  to  explain  all  knowledge  as 
having  its  origin  in  perception.  Rationalism  had  distrusted 
the  impressions  of  the  senses,  and  viewed  Reality  from  the 
standpoint  of  its  conceptual  system,  constructed  by  a  process  of 
logical  deduction  from  certain  truths  which  were  regarded  as 
axiomatic.  For  empiricism,  on  the  other  hand,  the  test  of 
Reality  was  to  be  found,  not  in  the  formal  coherence  of  an 
abstractly  deduced  system  of  concepts,  but  in  the  vividness  and 
immediate  certainty  of  actual  sense-experience. 

Reality  itself  was  conceived  by  both  schools  as  in  some  sense 
the  transcendent  ground  of  experience,  either  as  the  ultimate 
basis  of  the  rationalistic  system  of  concepts,  or  else  as  the  '  I 
know  not  what,'  accounting  for  the  immediate  presence  of  sense- 
experience.     Empiricism  and  Rationalism  differed  as  to  whether 

iG.,  I,  p.  538;  H.K.,  II,  p.  II. 


2  "^CtiOPEl^tlAUERS   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

the  real  nature  of  things  was  more  adequately  to  be  defined  in 
perceptual  or  in  conceptual  terms;  that  is  to  say,  the  dispute 
between  them  was  primarily  an  epistemological  one.  But  pre- 
Kantian  philosophy  was  unable  to  solve  the  problem  as  to  the 
relation  between  perception  and  conception  precisely  because  of 
its  inadequate  understanding  of  the  relation  between  experience 
and  reality.  And  here  is  where  Schopenhauer  finds  the  great  signifi- 
cance of  Kant's  reconstruction  of  philosophy.  "The  main  tend- 
ency of  the  Kantian  philosophy,"  he  says,  "is  to  place  before  us 
the  complete  diversity  of  the  Ideal  and  Real,  after  Locke  had 
already  broken  ground."^  Kant  proved  that  the  categories  of 
knowledge  cannot  apply  to  the  Real,  and  thus  ended  dogmatic 
philosophy  once  for  all.  The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  Schopen- 
hauer thinks,  showed  the  spanless  chasm  which,  for  epistemology, 
separates  cognitive  experience  from  Reality.  But  he  holds  that 
Kant,  while  restating  the  problem  of  perception  and  conception 
and  putting  it  upon  a  new  epistemological  basis,  was  far  from  clear 
and  consistent  in  his  own  treatment.  Schopenhauer  criticises 
severely  what  he  calls  Kant's  "unfortunate  confusion"^  of  per- 
ception and  conception,  and  regards  this  as  responsible  for  a 
mass  of  inconsistencies  in  the  Critique.  "After  he  has  .  .  . 
dismissed  this  whole  world  of  perception  which  fills  space  and 
time,  and  in  which  we  live  and  are,  with  the  meaningless  words 
'the  empirical  content  of  perception  is  given  us,'  he  immediately 
arrives  with  one  spring  at  the  logical  basis  of  his  whole  philosophy, 
the  table  of  judgments.''^  But  "the  world  of  perception,"  Schopen- 
hauer argues,  "is  infinitely  more  significant,  generally  present, 
and  rich  in  content  than  the  abstract  part  of  our  knowledge."^ 
If  Kant  had  given  as  much  attention  to  the  concrete  content  of 
experience  as  to  the  pattern  of  its  formal  organization,  he  would 
have  realized,  Schopenhauer  thinks,  the  fundamental  distinction 
between  perception  and  conception,  a  distinction  which  for 
Schopenhauer  himself  determines  the  plan  of  his  whole  epistemo- 
logical structure.     The  Kantian  'object  of  experience'  is  neither 

'G.,  IV,  p.  io6;  Bax,  Schopenhauer's  Essays,  London,  1891,  p.  99. 
*G.,  I,  p.  558;  H.K.,  II,  p.  32. 
3G.,  I,  pp.  549-550;  H.K.,  II,  p.  23. 
*G.,  I,  p.  551;  H.K.,  II,  p.  24. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  3 

perceptual  nor  conceptual:  it  is  "different  from  both,  and  yet 
both  at  once,  and  is  a  perfect  chimera."^ 

Schopenhauer's  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  is  not  wholly 
wrong,  but  he  misses  what  is  after  all  the  fundamental  significance 
of  the  Critical  position.  Kant's  insistence  upon  the  phenomenal 
character  of  our  whole  experience,  perceptual  and  conceptual 
alike,  certainly  helped  to  emancipate  philosophy  from  the  un- 
warranted assumptions  of  the  earlier  dogmatism.  The  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason  has  no  pledges  to  keep:  its  fundamental  postulate 
is  the  inevitable  one  of  respect  for  its  own  problem,  the  postulate, 
namely,  of  the  intelligibility  of  experience.  To  show  that  expe- 
rience is  possible  and  that  it  is  somehow  intelligible,  is  no  problem 
for  any  philosophy  that  realizes  its  proper  task.  To  explain 
the  nature  of  experience  and  the  manner  of  its  organization, 
however,  is  the  problem.  Only  in  this  sense  can  we  ask:  How 
is  experience  possible?  Experience  is  not  a  cryptogram,  to  be 
transliterated  by  the  use  of  any  transcendent  formula;  it  carries 
its  solution  in  its  own  bosom.  No  one  of  its  aspects  has  signifi- 
cance apart  from  the  rest.  This  standpoint,  involved  in  the 
very  presupposition  of  the  intelligibility  of  experience,  deter- 
mines at  the  outset  the  Critical  procedure.  For  neither  are 
concepts  mere  mutilated  copies  of  sense-impressions,  nor  are 
perceptions  confused  concepts,  but  the  perceptual  and  the  con- 
ceptual are  both  factors  in  the  organic  unity  of  experience. 
"  Thoughts  without  contents  are  empty,  intuitions  without  concepts 
are  blind.'"^  This  is  the  fundamental  guiding  principle  of  Kant's 
entire  philosophy:  the  transcendent  must  give  way  to  the  tran- 
scendental, and  a  Critical  epistemology  supplant  its  ontologizing 
predecessor.^ 

Whether  Kant  himself,  in  denying  the  possibility  of  a  science 
of  metaphysics,  denied  along  with  it  the  metaphysical  significance 
of  experience,^  and  whether  he  carried  his  epistemological  inten- 
tion consistently  through,  are  matters  which  had  better  be  dis- 
cussed later.     The  point  here  is,  that  the  raison  d'etre  of  the 

'G.,  I,  p.  ss8;  H.K.,  II,  p.  32. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  51;  M.,  p.  41. 

'C/.  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  12;  M..  p.  10  ;  G.,  IV,  pp.  loi  flf. 

*Cf.  Riehl,  Der  philosophische  Kritizismus,  Vol.  I,  Leipzig,  1908,  p.  584. 


4  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

'^Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  the  significance  of  its  novel  standpoint, 
and  the  reason  why  in  it  both  empiricism  and  rationalism  were 
aufgehoben  (in  the  twofold  HegeHan  sense  of  that  term^),  are  to 
be  found,  not  in  its  solution  of  the  specific  question  as  to  whether 
perception  or  conception  is  epistemologically  prior,  but  in  the 
fact  that  it  indicated  the  true  method  of  approaching  the  problem. 
In  dealing  with  our  experience  from  the  transcendental  point  of 
view,  Kant  showed  that  the  conflict  between  empiricism  and 
rationalism  lacked  all  ontological  significance.  Neither  percep- 
tion nor  conception  alone  could  any  longer  possibly  claim  to 
represent  reality,  for  both  were  shown  to  be  mutually  involved 
in  the  very  nature  of  experience. 

Schopenhauer  recognizes  the  importance  of  Kant's  account  of 
the  relation  of  experience  to  reality,  but  he  fails  to  realize  that 
the  Critical  method  necessitates  a  restatement  of  the  whole 
problem  of  perception  and  conception  and  of  the  genesis  of 
knowledge.  In  order  to  understand  at  once  the  significance  and 
the  inadequacy  of  Schopenhauer's  position,  one  should  follow 
carefully  his  consecutive  analysis  and  criticism  of  Kant's  theory 
of  knowledge. 

Schopenhauer's  admiration  for  the  'Transcendental  Esthetic' 
is  evident.  "The Transcendental  Esthetic,"  he  says,  "is  a  work 
of  such  extraordinary  merit  that  it  alone  would  have  been  sufft- 
cient  to  immortalize  the  name  of  Kant.  Its  proofs  carry  such 
perfect  conviction,  that  I  number  its  propositions  among  in- 
contestable truths,  and  without  doubt  they  are  also  among  those 
that  are  richest  in  results,  and  are,  therefore,  to  be  regarded  as 
the  rarest  thing  in  the  world,  a  real  and  great  discovery  in  meta- 
physics."^  In  demonstrating  that  "space  and  time,  no  less  than 
causality,  are  known  by  us  a  priori,  that  is,  lie  in  us  before  all  ex- 
perience, and  hence  belong  to  the  subjective  side  of  knowledge,"^ 
Kant  not  only  completed  the  work  of  Hume,  but,  in  completing 
it,  reconstructed  it  and  gave  it  an  entirely  new  significance. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  Schopenhauer  seems  right.  Indeed, 
an  interesting  parallel  might  be  drawn  between  the  development 

^  Logic  (Wallace's  transl.).  Oxford,  1892,  p.  180. 
2G..  I,  p.  558;  H.K..  II,  p.  32. 
'G.,  IV,  p.  32;  Bax.,  p.  20. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  5 

of  the  phenomenalistic  conception  of  space  and  time  and  the 
genesis  of  modern  epistemology.  The  scholastic  conception  of 
space,  as  a  metaphysical  entity  enclosing  the  finite  universe, 
proved  inadequate  to  meet  the  issues  of  modern  theory  of  knowl- 
edge. In  early  rationalism,  to  be  sure,  something  corresponding 
to  the  old  notion  long  retained  a  lodging  place.  In  Descartes's 
philosophy  space  is  indubitably  real,  since  it  is  regarded  as  the 
essence  of  corporeal  substance,^  and  Spinoza  insists  that  extension 
is  one  of  the  infinite  attributes  of  God.^  This  realistic  theory 
of  space  Descartes  and  Spinoza  held  side  by  side  with  an 
opposite  estimate  of  time,  which  they  explained  as  subjective, 
derived  from  the  mere  correlation  of  represented  motions,  and 
lacking  all  metaphysical  reality.^  British  empiricism,  however, 
grew  emphatic  in  its  insistence  on  the  experiential  character  of 
space  and  time  alike.  In  Locke  this  tendency  finds  expression 
in  his  opposition  to  Descartes's  identification  of  space  with  cor- 
poreal substance.^  Locke's  protest  is  based  largely  on  his  agnos- 
tic attitude  concerning  substance;  this  remained  for  him  the  'I 
know  not  what,'  to  identify  which  with  extension  he  regarded 
as  a  serious  fallacy.^  The  idea  of  space,  according  to  Locke's 
theory,  has  its  origin  in  our  sensations  of  sight  and  touch  ;^ 
and  time  is  likewise  considered  from  the  standpoint  of  experience  ^ 
as  explainable  only  in  terms  of  the  succession  of  ideas.^  This-, 
method  of  approaching  the  problem  of  space  and  time  gained 
confidence  and  exactness  of  expression  in  Berkeley  and  Hume: 
space  is  defined  by  them  as  our  idea  of  the  orderly  distribution  of 
co-existent  objects;  time,  again,  is  atomistically  viewed  as  the 
succession  of  discrete  moments,  corresponding  to  the  sequence 
of  simple  ideas.^ 

iC/.  Princ.  ph.il..  Pars  II,  viii.  "^Ethics,  Part  I,  prop,  xv,  schol. 

'C/.  Princ.  phil..  Pars  I,  Ivii;  Spinoza,  Cog.  met.,  I,  iv;  Elh.,  II,  xlv-xlvii. 
Leibniz's  theory  of  space  and  time  differs  materially  from  that  of  Descartes  and 
Spinoza,  and  it  has  therefore  seemed  advisable  to  refer  to  it  separately,  after 
having  indicated  the  differences  between  the  earlier  rationalistic  position  and 
that  of  British  empiricism. 

*  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding,  Vol.  I,  Oxford,  1894,  p.  226. 

^Op.  cit..  Vol.  I.  p.  228.     Cf.  also  Book  II,  chapter  xiii,  pp.  218-37. 

^Op.  cit..  Book  II,  chapter  iv. 

"^Op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  239;  cf.  Book  II,  chapters  xiv  and  xv,  pp.  238-269. 

«C/.  Berkeley,  Works,  Vol.  I,  Oxford,  1871,  pp.  206,  282;  Hume,  Treatise  of 
Human  Nature,  Oxford,  1888,  pp.  26-68,  esp.  pp.  36,  38,  53. 


O  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

Leibniz's  theory  of  space  is  relational,  quite  the  opposite  of 
the  Newtonian  doctrine  of  absolute  space  as  the  infinite  collection 
of  actual  points.  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  considers  Leibniz  fairly 
strong  in  his  argument  against  the  monistic  theory  of  space  as 
an  attribute,  but  inconclusive  in  establishing  his  own  conception 
of  space  as  an  assemblage  of  relations,  a  position  logically  neces- 
sitated by  his  monadism.  Time  Leibniz  distinguishes  from 
duration:  duration  is  an  attribute  of  objects;  time  is  the  ideal 
measure  of  duration.  Interpretations  of  Leibniz  differ  as  to  the 
metaphysical  reality  of  time  in  his  system,  and  a  discussion  of 
these  would  necessitate  closer  attention  to  his  general  theory  of 
monads  than  seems  relevant  for  the  present  purpose.  Whether 
space  and  time,  as  ideal  relations,  obtain  in  the  ontological  order 
of  monads  or  not,  however,  the  space  and  time  of  experience 
Leibniz  clearly  regards  as  ideal. ^ 

Thus  one  sees,  alongside  of  the  persistent  speculation  in  modern 
philosophy  regarding  the  status  of  space  and  time  in  the  tran- 
scendent world  of  'Reality,'  a  growing  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  for  us  they  are  significant  only  in  terms  of  experience. 
And  the  development  of  modern  philosophy  is  characterized  by 
an  increasing  realization  of  the  intimate  relationship  between 
space  and  time,  as  co-essential  aspects  of  experience;  there  is, 
as  it  were,  a  growing  rapprochement  between  the  two. 

In  Kant's  doctrine  of  the  transcendental  ideality  of  space  and 
time,  all  the  partly  thought-out  and  imperfectly  formulated 
views  of  their  phenomenal  character  come  to  a  focus.  Space 
and  time  are  for  Kant  the  a  priori  forms  of  outer  and  inner 
intuition  respectively.  Their  reality  is  purely  experiential ;  they 
find  their  application  solely  within  the  scope  of  finite  experience, 
outside  of  which  they  would  be  utterly  meaningless,  but  within 
which  they  are  indispensable,  representing  as  they  do  its  intui- 
tional basis.  The  doctrine  of  the  'Transcendental  Esthetic'  is 
among  the  very  few  Kantian  theories  which  Schopenhauer  accepts 
unreservedly;    the   modifications   he  recommends   are   only  by 

1  See,  in  this  connection,  Russell's  discussion  of  Leibniz's  theory  of  space  and 
time  in  his  admirable  book.  The  Philosophy  of  Leibniz,  Cambridge,  1900.  Cf. 
chapters  ix  and  x,  especially  pp.  112  ff.,  118  ff.,  and  also  his  collection  of  leading 
passages  from  Leibniz,  pp.  230-59. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  7 

way  of  emphasis  and  addition.  "From  the  doctrine  of  the 
Transcendental  Esthetic,"  he  says,  "I  knew  of  nothing  to  take 
away,  only  of  something  to  add."^  As  against  the  conceptually 
reasoned  out  procedure  of  the  Euclidean  geometry,  which  Kant 
regarded  as  explainable  only  on  the  basis  of  his  theory  of  space 
and  time,  Schopenhauer  champions  a  new  geometry,  based  on 
pure  immediate  intuition  and  unimpeded  by  roundabout,  irrele- 
vant demonstrations.- 

It  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  here  the  principles  of  the  'Tran  - 
scendental  Esthetic'  in  their  relation  to  the  Euclidean  method  in 
geometry .3  Suffice  it  to  say  that  Schopenhauer's  is  no  voice 
crying  in  the  wilderness:  his  teacher,  G.  E.  Schulze,*  is  one  of 
the  many  who  have  believed  that  the  'Transcendental  Esthetic' 
suggests  a  needed  reconstruction  of  geometry.  The  significant 
point  in  this  connection  is  Schopenhauer's  insistence  upon  the 
distinctly  intuitive  character  of  space  and  time.  Critics  of 
Kant  have  sometimes  characterized  his  view  of  space  as  con- 
ceptual ;5  others  have  regarded  Euclidean  space  as  distinctly  in- 
tuitional.^ There  can  be  no  room  for  doubt  as  to  Schopenhauer's 
own  attitude  on  the  subject.  The  infinite  divisibility  and  ex- 
pansion of  space  and  time  are  for  him  matters  of  pure  intuition ; 
they  represent  the  principium  rationis  sufficientis  essendi,  as  the 
basis  of  mathematical  relatedness  underlying  geometry  and 
arithmetic  respectively.^     This  their  mathematical  character  is 

iG..  I.  p.  559;  H.K.,  II.  p.  33- 

^Cf.  G.,  I,  pp.  114-119;  H.K..  I,  pp.  90-96. 

»C/.  Fritz  Medicus,  "Kants  transscendentale  Aesthetik  unddie  nichteuklidische 
Geometrie,"  in  Kantsludien,  Vol.  III.  pp.  261-300. 

*G.,  I,  p.  559;  H.K..  II,  p. 33.  "One  of  Kant's  opponents,  and  indeed  the 
acutest  of  them,"  Schopenhauer  calls  Schulze,  in  referring  to  his  argument  as 
presented  in  the  Kritik  der  theoretischen  Philosophic,  Book  I,  sect.  15.  Schopen- 
hauer is  not  so  appreciative  when  Schulze's  views  do  not  happen  to  coincide  with 
his  own  conclusions. 

"C/.,  e.  g.,  W.  Caldwell,  "Schopenhauer's  Criticism  of  Kant,"  in  Mind,  1891, 

P-  363- 

«C/.  Goswin  Uphues,  Kant  und  seine  Vorgdnger,  p.  120.  Cf.  also  Richard 
Honigswald's  discussion  of  this  point  in  Kanlstudien,  Vol.  XIII,  "Zum  Begriff  der 
kritischen  Erkenntnislehre."  pp.  409-456.  especially  pp.  420  ff. 

'C/.  Schopenhauer's  Table  of  the  "Praedicabilia  a  priori  of  Space  and  Time," 
G.,  II.pp.  6off.;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  219  ff.  The  following  brief  outHne  of  Schopenhauer's 
'four  classes  of  objects,'  as  presented  in  the  Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle  of  Sufi- 


o  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

foreign  to  empirical  perception;  the  world  of  perceptual  expe- 
rience is  not  a  space-world  and  also  a  time-world,  but  a  space- 
time-world. 

Now,  after  the  intuitive  basis  and  the  form  of  perception  have 
received  such  a  thorough-going  treatment  at  the  hands  of  Kant, 
what  of  its  content?  Schopenhauer  says:  "The  whole  teaching 
of  Kant  contains  really  nothing  more  about  this  than  the  oft- 
repeated  meaningless  expression :  '  The  empirical  element  in  per- 
ception is  given  from  without.'"^  And  here  it  is  that  Schopen- 
hauer discovers  Kant's  TrpcoTov  yjrevSo^.  "Our  knowledge,"  Kant 
says,  "has  two  sources,  receptivity  of  impressions  and  sponta- 
neity of  conceptions:  the  first  is  the  capacity  for  receiving  ideas, 
the  second  that  of  knowing  an  object  through  these  ideas: 
through  the  first  an  object  is  given  us,  through  the  second  it  is 
thought. "2  This  theory  of  the  conceptualizing  of  the  material 
of  sense-impressions  into  so-called  'objective'  experience,  Schg,- 
penhauer  repudiates  as  false.  The  object,  the  Vorstellung,  is  not' 
'given'  us.  What  is  actually  given,  he  insists,  is  the  raw  sensa- 
tion, i.  e.,  the  mere  stimulation  of  a  sense-organ.  By  means  of 
the  twofold  form  of  space-time,  whose  union  yields  causal  related- 
ness,  the  understanding  transforms  this  primal  meaningless  sense- 
organ  stimulation  into  a  perception,  an  idea,  a  Vorstellung, 
"which  now  exists  as  an  object  in  space  and  time,  and  cannot 
be  distinguished  from  the  latter  (the  object)  except  in  so  far  as 
we  ask  after  the  thing-in-itself,  but  apart  from  this  is  identical 
with  it."^     "It  is  only  when  the   Understanding  begins  to  act 

cient  Reason,  does  not  follow  Schopenhauer's  own  order  {principium  rationis  suf- 
ficientis  fiendi,  cognoscendi,  essendi,  agendi) ;  it  has  been  adapted  rather  to  the  order 
of  the  general  argument  in  the  Kritik  der  Kantischen  Philosophic,  which  order  has 
been  the  one  usually  followed  in  this  monograph.  The  change  in  the  order  of 
exposition  does  not  affect  the  force  of  the  argument  as  presented  in  the  Fourfold 
Root,  and  it  indicates  more  adequately  and  with  greater  clearness,  I  trust,  Schopen- 
hauer's fundamental  epistemological  principles,  as  distinguished  from  those  of 
Kant. 

'G.,  I,  p.  560;  H.K.,  II,  p.  34. 

^Ibid.;  cf.  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  50;  M.,  p.  40. 

'G.,  I,  p.  560;  H.K.,  II,  p.  34.  Cf.  also  Section  21  of  the  Fourfold  Root  of  the 
Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason  (G.,  Ill,  pp.  64  ff.;  Hillebrand's  translation,  Bohn's 
Library,  pp.  58  ff.),  in  which  Schopenhauer  demonstrates  at  length  the  a  priori 
character  of  the  conception  of  causality  and  the  'intellectual'  character  of  empirical 
perception. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  9 

.  .  .  only  when  it  begins  to  apply  its  sole  form,  the  causal  law, 
that  a  powerful  transformation  takes  place,  by  which  subjective 
sensation  becomes  objective  perception.  .  .  .  Accordingly  our 
every-day  empirical  perception  is  an  intellectual  one.  .  .  ."^ 
Experience,  then,  arises  for  Schopenhauer,  not  through  the  con- 
ceptualizing of  the  intuitions  of  sense,  as  he  understands  Kant 
to  hold,  but  through  the  intervention  of  the  understanding, 
which  he  regards  as  the  perceptual  faculty  par  excellence,  common 
to  man  and  brute  alike.  The  multiform  relatedness  obtaining 
in  the  perceptual  order  thus  originated,  Schopenhauer  finds 
epitomized  in  the  principium  rationis  sufficientis  fiendi,  i.  e.. 
Causality.  Spatial  co-existence  and  temporal  succession  here 
fuse  into  the  concrete  perceptual  process  involving  causally  con- 
nected changes. 

It  should  be  observed  here  that  Schopenhauer's  criticism  of 
Kant's  account  of  the  genesis  of  experience  ignores  the  factor  of 
the  productive  or  creative  imagination.  Kant  says,  for  example: 
"We  must  admit  a  pure  transcendental  synthesis  of  imagination 
which  forms  even  the  foundation  of  the  possibility  of  all  experi- 
ence. "^  And  again:  " The  whole  of  our  experience  becomes  pos- 
sible only  by  means  of  that  transcendental  function  of  imagi- 
nation, without  which  no  concepts  of  objects  could  ever  come 
together  in  one  experience."^  Such  passages  clearly  imply  that 
unity-in-variety  is  the  condition  of  the  very  possibility  of  expe- 
rience, i.  e.,  that  experience  is  implicitly,  intrinsically  organic. 
Kant's  theory  of  the  productive  imagination,  in  spite  of  its 
vagueness  and  its  too  free  use  of  metaphors,  as  when  he  speaks 
of  its  work  being  done  'in  a  dark  chamber  of  the  soul,'  is,  after 
all,  his  confused  expression  of  a  most  profound  truth.  The 
organic  unity  of  experience  is  for  Kant  a  presupposition  of  its 
very  possibility;  Kant  felt  that  the  unity  was  there  somewhere 
in  the  very  essence  of  experience.  This  failure  on  the  part  of 
Schopenhauer  to  give  due  recognition  to  the  fundamental  role 
played  by  the  productive  imagination  in  the  Critical  theory  of 
experience,  should  be  kept  in  mind  in  estimating  the  value  of 

iG.,  Ill,  pp.  66,  67;  Hillebr.,  pp.  60,  61.  , 

'^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  loi;  M.,  p.  84. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  123;  M.,  p.  loi. 


10  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

his  criticism  of  what  he  calls  the  conceptualizing  of  the  perceptual 
material  in  Kant's  epistemology. 

Schopenhauer  spares  no  pains  to  impress  upon  his  readers  the 
exclusively  phenomenal  character  of  causality.  The  'Principle 
of  Becoming'  affects  changes  of  states  alone,  changes  conditioning 
each  other  in  a  definite  way.  ''Every  change  in  the  material 
world  can  only  take  place  because  another  has  immediately  preceded 
it;  this  is  the  true  and  the  whole  content  of  the  law  of  causality."^ 
Substances,  Dinge,  are  altogether  beyond  its  scope.  The  cause- 
effect  relation  is  never  a  vague  one:  by  'cause'  we  always  under- 
stand the  temporally  antecedent  change  which  actually  evokes 
the  consequent  'effect.'  The  change  formerly  considered  as 
effect  then  turns  cause,  evoking  in  its  turn  a  new  change,  and 
so  on  ad  infinitum.  There  is  a  logical  as  well  as  a  temporal 
irreversibility  of  cause  and  effect,  according  to  Schopenhauer's 
theory,  to  ignore  which  irreversibility  is  to  ignore  the  entire  sig- 
nificance of  the  causal  relation. 

In  accordance  with  the  equality  or  inequality  of  the  two 
causally  connected  changes,  Schopenhauer  distinguishes  three 
kinds  of  causation.  He  says:  (i)  "I  call  a  cause  (Ursach),  in 
the  narrowest  sense  of  the  word,  that  state  of  matter,  which, 
while  it  introduces  another  state  with  necessity,  yet  suffers  as 
great  a  change  itself  as  that  which  it  causes;  which  is  expressed 
in  the  rule:  'action  and  reaction  are  equal.'  Further,  in  the  case 
of  what  is  properly  speaking  a  cause,  the  effect  increases  directly 
in  proportion  to  the  cause,  and  therefore  also  the  reaction. "^ 
Here  belong  the  mechanical  causes  of  unorganized  nature,  operat- 
ing in  the  phenomena  dealt  with  by  mechanics,  chemistry,  and 
the  physical  sciences  generally.  (2)  "On  the  other  hand,"  he 
says,  "I  call  a  stimulus  (Reiz),  such  a  cause  as  sustains  no  re- 
action proportional  to  its  effect,  and  the  intensity  of  which  does 
not  vary  directly  in  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  its  effect,  so 
that  the  effect  cannot  be  measured  by  it."^  This  is  the  causation 
of  organic  and  vegetative  nature.  (3)  We  have,  moreover,  to 
consider  motive,  or  'animal  cause,'  i.  e.,  causation  on  the  con- 
ic, II.  pp.  52-53;  H.K..  II.  p.  211. 
2G..  I,  p.  169;  H.K.,  I,  p.  149- 
'  Ibid. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  II 

scious  plane,  operating  through  knowledge.  This  is  the  causality 
determining  the  purely  animal  functioning  of  all  animals,  and 
the  conscious  activity  of  all  conscious  beings. "^ 

Man's  faculty  of  being  determined  by  motives  expands  his 
sphere  of  causal  functioning.  In  the  conflict  of  motives,  however, 
the  one  which  actually  proves  strongest  is  a  cause  as  truly  neces- 
sary as  that  impelling  the  inanimate  object  in  its  motion.  In 
this  respect,  there  is  no  fundamental  distinction  between  the  two. 
The  consciousness  we  possess  of  our  ability  to  determine  our- 
selves through  motives  is  the  only  consciousness  we  have  of 
ourselves  as  subjects.-  That  is  to  say,  the  subject  of  knowledge, 
as  such,  can  never  be  known,  never  become  an  object  of  repre- 
sentation. To  adapt  a  passage  from  the  Upanishads:  "Id 
videndum  non  est:  omnia  videt;  et  audiendum  non  est:  omnia 
audit;  sciendum  non  est:  omnia  scit.  .  .  ."^  The  subject  of 
knowledge,  the  knower  himself,  is  known  only  as  willing:  a  propo- 
sition which  Schopenhauer  regards  as  'synthetic  a  posteriori,' 
derived  as  it  is  from  our  inmost  experience.  "Introspection 
always  shows  us  to  ourselves  as  willing."^ 

Looked  at  from  this  point  of  view  of  volition,  the  basis  of 
relatedness  of  Schopenhauer's  next  general  class  of  objects  be- 
comes manifest,  principium  rationis  sufficientis  agendi,  i.  e., 
Motivation.  Here,  where  the  subject  of  knowledge  itself  is  in 
question,  the  rules  affecting  objects  of  representations  no  longer 
apply.  The  "actual  identity  of  the  knower  with  what  is  known 
as  willing — that  is,  of  Subject  and  Object — is  immediately 
giveny^  Schopenhauer  calls  this  the  inexplicable  nodus  of  the 
universe,  "das  Wunder  Kar  e^oxvi'." 

The  bearing  of  the  question  of  motivation  upon  the  issue  of 
man's  freedom,  and  the  fundamental  metaphysical  problem 
of  the  relation  of  knowledge  to  the  Will-Reality,  will  be  duly 
considered    along   with    the    examination  of    the    Dialectic    of 

'Schopenhauer  makes  a  nice  distinction  between  activity  of  animals  and  animal 
activity.  Cf.  Fr.  d.  Willens,  G.,  Ill,  pp.  410-411.  In  regard  to  the  threefold 
division  of  causes,  cf.  G.,  I,  pp.  169  flf.;  II,  pp.  228  ff. 

*G.,  Ill,  p.  158;  Hillebr.,  p.  165. 

»G.,  Ill,  p.  158;  Hillebr.,  p.  166. 

*G.,  Ill,  p.  161;  Hillebr.,  p.  168. 

6G..  Ill,  p.  161;  Hillebr.,  p.  169. 


12  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

Pure  Reason  and  the  discussion  of  the  Will  as  the  thing-in-itself. 
The  significant  point  in  this  connection  is  that,  in  the  three  classes 
of  objects  which  have  been  discussed  so  far,  Schopenhauer  has 
disclaimed  any  need  of  conceptions.  Space  and  time  yield  the 
principle  of  intuitive  relatedness:  taken  separately,  they  are  non- 
perceptual  pure  intuitions;  when  they  are  united  in  concrete 
experience,  the  understanding  finds  its  sole  function  in  transform- 
ing sense-excitations  into  causally  connected  perceptions.  The 
action  of  motives,  also, — the  consciousness  of  self-determination, 
— while  raising  metaphysical  problems,  is  yet  an  immediate 
matter,  foreign  to  all  conceptual  thought.  "  The  action  of  motives 
is  causality  seen  from  within."^  The  whole  range  of  immediate 
experience,  intellectual  and  volitional  alike,  has  thus  been  covered 
without  any  reference  to  abstract  thought.  Our  concrete  ex- 
perience, Schopenhauer  declares,  requires  no  thinking,  no  con- 
cepts, no  abstract  categories,  to  dictate  to  it  any  organization 
whatever.  Perception  leaps  out  of  its  sensation-shell  complete 
and  perfect.  If,  however,  we  abandon  concrete  experience  and 
look  for  help  from  conceptions,  then,  he  says,  we  find  the  intel- 
lectual faculty  of  the  understanding  to  be  of  no  avail.  Thoughts 
are  not  present  in  perceptual,  that  is  to  say  (for  Schopenhauer) 
concrete  experience;  they  are  the  result  of  abstraction,  and  the 
faculty  operating  in  the  process  which  releases  them  is  what 
Schopenhauer  calls  Reason  (Vernunft). 

Here,  then,  we  have  Schopenhauer's  clear-cut  distinction  be- 
tween Verstand  and  Vernunft  in  so  many  words.  Understanding 
is  the  faculty  of  perception,  which  man  shares  with  the  higher 
animals.  Its  machinery  is  quite  simple:  through  the  union  of 
space  and  time  it  endows  the  material  of  sensation  with  causal 
relatedness.  Reason,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  faculty  of  reflection,^ 
and  of  reflection  alone.  Its  stock  in  trade  is  conceptions,  which 
are  derived  from  perceptions  by  a  process  of  abstraction;  but 
they  "form  a  distinct  class  of  ideas,  existing  only  in  the  mind  of 
man,  and  entirely  different  from  the  ideas  of  perception. "^  Per- 
ception always  remains  the  asymptote  of  conception;^  what  a 

>G.,  Ill,  p.  163;  Hillebr.,  p.  171. 
2G.,  I,  p.  77;  H.K..  I,  p.  50. 
3G.,  I.  p.  99;  H.K.,  I,  p.  74- 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  13 

conception  gains  in  range  of  application,  it  loses  in  concreteness 
of  meaning:  "the  content  and  the  extent  of  the  concepts  stand 
in  inverse  relation  to  each  other,  and  thus  the  more  is  thought 
under  a  concept,  the  less  is  thought  in  it.  .  .  ."^ 

Schopenhauer's  view  of  conception  is  thus  not  unlike  Hume's: 
"Reflection  is  the  necessary  copy  or  repetition  of  the  originally 
presented  world  of  perception,  but  it  is  a  special  kind  of  copy 
in  an  entirely  different  material.  Thus  concepts  may  quite 
properly  be  called  ideas  of  ideas."-  Reality  and  certainty  are 
given  only  in  perception,  not  in  the  conceptual  structures  of 
science.  These  latter  generalize,  systematize,  and  store  for  future 
reference  our  knowledge  of  ideas;  but  the  concrete  test  of  their 
validity  Schopenhauer  finds  in  terms,  not  of  immanent  organi- 
zation, but  of  perceptual  immediacy.  The  connection  obtaining 
in  the  process  of  abstraction,  which  yields  conceptions  by  the 
selective  elimination  of  differences,  is  that  of  reason  and  con- 
sequent,— corresponding  to  the  cause-efifect  relation  of  the  per- 
ceptual world  of  the  understanding.  This  is  the  last  form  of  the 
Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason :  principium 
rationis  siifficientis  cognoscendi.  Just  as  the  demonstration  of  a 
causal  connection  between  two  perceptible  changes  establishes 
the  phenomenal  reality  of  the  process  considered,  so,  by  virtue 
of  the  fact  that  a  judgment  has  a  sufficient  reason,  the  predicate 
'true'  is  applicable  to  it. 

Conceptual  relatedness  is  a  form  of  the  selfsame  principle 
which,  in  the  world  of  perceptual  changes,  assumes  the  form  of 
causality,  though  the  cognitive  content  involved  in  the  two  cases 
is  fundamentally  different.  Schopenhauer  repudiates  any  con- 
fusion of  the  one  Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient 
Reason  with  the  multiform  character  of  its  several  spheres  of 
operation.^     Reasoning  clarifies  the  abstract  content  of  concep- 

iG.,  II,  p.  74;  H.K.,  II,  p.  236.  2G.,  I,  p.  78;  H.K.,  I.  p.  52. 

'  The  tendency,  already  present  in  the  Fourfold  Root,  to  insist  upon  the  four  dif- 
ferent classes  of  objects,  while  stoutly  maintaining  the  oneness  of  the  fourfold  prin- 
ciple, becomes  clearly  manifest  in  Schopenhauer's  later  writings,  where  the  sharpest 
separation  is  maintained  between  perceptual  knowledge  and  conceptual  thought. 
The  principles  of  Becoming  and  of  Knowing  part  company,  and  one  discerns  a 
fatal  tendency  to  regard  the  Fourfold  Root  as  four  roots.  This  fact  shows  the 
inadequacy  of  Schopenhauer's  fundamental  epistemological  position,  which  will  be 
discussed  later,  in  the  critical  portion  of  this  chapter. 


14  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

tions,  assigns  their  limits  of  application,  and  establishes  their 
perceptual  genealogy.  But  conceptions  are  never  'what  is  first,' 
they  provide  the  thinking  subject  with  no  new  knowledge;  far 
from  being  the  necessary  conditions  of  the  possibility  of  percep- 
tion, they  themselves  "receive  their  content  only  from  the  per- 
ceptible idea,  which  is  therefore  primary  knowledge  {Urerkennt- 
niss),  and  has  consequently  alone  to  be  taken  account  of  in  an 
investigation  of  the  relation  between  the  ideal  and  the  real."'' 
The  concept  is  a  vassal  in  epistemology,  lacking  all  autonomy; 
you  can  take  out  of  it  only  what  you  first  put  into  it  through 
perception.  Schopenhauer  follows  Hume  in  demanding  of  each 
conception  its  passport  showing  a  legitimate  perceptual  ancestry, 
and  regards  all  self-originating  'rational'  concepts  as  the  vain 
fictions  of  "the  pure  self-thinking  absolute  Idea,  the  scene  of  the 
ballet-dance  of  the  self-moving  conceptions, "^ — an  expression 
which  calls  to  mind  Mr.  Bradley's  famous  turn  of  the  phrase.^ 

How  does  this  apparently  clear  and  consistent  theory  of  the 
relation  between  perception  and  conception  compare  with  what 
Schopenhauer  regards  as  Kant's  account  of  the  genesis  of  knowl- 
edge? 

With  his  characteristically  sharp  eye  for  details,  Schopenhauer 
brings  together  a  list  of  definitions  which  apparently  show  Kant's 
utter  confusion  as  to  what  he  meant  by  'understanding'  and  by 
'  reason.'  The  list  is  rather  long  and,  in  some  respects,  suggestive. 
Reason  is  defined  by  Kant  as  the  faculty  supplying  the  principles 
of  knowledge  a  priori,^  and  is  as  such  opposed  to  the  understand- 
ing as  the  faculty  of  rules,^  a  distinction  which  Schopenhauer, 
properly  enough,  calls  "arbitrary  and  inadmissible,"^  Kant,  how- 
ever, calls  the  understanding  not  only  the  faculty  of  rules,'  but  also 
the  source  of  principles,^  the  "power  of  producing  representations, 

iG.,  II,  p.  223;  H.K.,  II,  p.  401. 

''G.,  Ill,  p.  140;  Hillebr.,  p.  145. 

^Principles  of  Logic,  London,  1883,  p.  533. 

*Kr.  d.r.  V.,  p.  11;  M..  p.  9. 

'Kr.  d.  r.  v.,  p.  299;  M.,  p.  243. 

•G.,  I,  p.  552;  HK.,  II,  p.  26. 

'>Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  132,  302;  M.,  pp.  108,  245. 

*Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  158;  M.,  pp.  129-130.  There  are  other  abstract  distinctions 
which  Kant  makes  and  which  Schopenhauer  opposes  for  no  obvious  reasons.  Thus 
Kant  calls  mere  judging  the  work  of  the  understanding  (Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  69;  M.,  p. 


NATURE  AND  GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  1$ 

or  the  spontaneity  of  knowledge,"^  the  faculty  of  judging,^  the 
faculty  of  concepts,^  and  the  faculty  of  cognitions  generally.'* 
Reason,  again,  is  variously  described  as  the  faculty  of  judging 
mediately,^  as  the  constant  condition  of  all  free  actions  of  man,^ 
as  the  ground  of  all  concepts,  opinions,  and  assertions,''  as  the 
faculty  which  organizes  and  systematizes  conceptions,^  as  the 
faculty  of  deducing  the  particular  from  the  general,^  and  so  forth. ^'* 
Now,  from  all  this  lack  of  consistency  in  his  terminology, 
Schopenhauer  argues  Kant's  utter  confusion  of  understanding 
and  reason.  This  perplexity  on  Kant's  part  Schopenhauer  finds 
not  difficult  to  explain,  from  his  own  point  of  view:  neither  of  the 
two  faculties  is  assigned  a  definite  function,  just  because  Kant 
failed  to  recognize  their  respective  spheres  of  operation.  It  is 
in  the  failure  sharply  to  discriminate  between  perception  and 
conception  that  Schopenhauer  finds  the  ground  of  that  "  heillosen 
Vermischung"^^  which  mars  the  entire  'Transcendental  Logic' 
How  do  perception  and  conception  each  affect  the  genesis  of  the 

57),  and  reason  the  faculty  of  inference  {Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  303,  330;  M.,  pp.  246, 
268).  Now  Schopenhauer  himself  regards  judging  as  a  sort  of  bridge  between 
perception  and  conception  (G.,  I,  pp.  108  ff.;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  84  ff.;  cf.  also  the  discus- 
sion of  Schopenhauer's  theory  of  judgment  in  Chapter  II  of  this  monograph),  and 
inference  as  the  conceptual  connection  of  judgments  with  each  other;  so  that  the 
Kantian  distinction,  as  interpreted  by  Schopenhauer,  would  seem  to  be  not  wholly 
out  of  accord  with  his  own  position.  Of  course,  no  such  abstract  distinction  be- 
tween judgment  and  inference  could  be  valid  for  modern  logic,  which  insists  with 
increasing  emphasis  upon  the  unitary  character  of  the  judgment-process,  involving 
judgment  and  inference  alike.  It  is  therefore  hard  to  see  in  what  respect  Schopen- 
hauer's explicit  separation  of  what,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  inseparable  is  less  open  to 
criticism  than  Kant's  confused  and  inconsistent  distinction,  confused  because  out 
of  harmony  with  his  own  fundamentally  organic  conception  of  experience. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  51;  M.,  p.  41. 

'Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  69;  M.,  p.  57. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  160;  M.,  p.  130. 

*Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  II  Aufl.,  p.  137;  M.,  p.  749. 

''Kr.  d.  r.  V .,  p.  330;  M.,  p.  268. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  F.,  p.  553;  M.,  p.  447. 

''Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  614;  M.,  p.  494. 

*Kr.  d.  r,  V.,  pp.  634  f.;  M.,  pp.  517  f. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  646;  M.,  p.  520. 

'"Note  Schopenhauer's  failure  to  recognize  here  the  important  Kantian  distinc- 
tion between  understanding  and  reason,  as  dealing  with  the  conditioned  and  the 
unconditioned  respectively.  This  point  is  taken  up  for  closer  consideration  in  the 
sequel. 

»G.,  I,  p.  561;  H.K.,  II,  p.  35. 


1 6  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

object  of  experience?  Kant's  answer  lacks  all  consistency: 
"through  the  whole  of  his  theory  the  utter  confusion  of  the  idea 
of  perception  with  the  abstract  idea  tends  towards  a  something 
between  the  two  which  he  expounds  as  the  object  of  knowledge 
through  the  understanding  and  its  categories,  and  calls  this 
knowledge  experience.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  Kant  really 
figured  to  himself  something  fully  determined  and  really  distinct 
in  this  object  of  the  understanding."^ 

To  prove  his  case,  Schopenhauer  traces  through  the  whole 
'Transcendental  Logic'  Kant's  treatment  of  the  understanding  as 
afTecting  the  object  of  experience.  The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason 
vacillates,  he  argues,  between  regarding  the  function  of  the  under- 
standing as  perceptual  and  as  conceptual.  The  understanding 
is  called,  successively,  the  faculty  of  judging,  of  thinking,  of 
connecting  a  priori  and  bringing  the  manifold  of  given  repre- 
sentations under  the  unity  of  apperception ,2  and  its  categories 
are  declared  not  to  be  conditions  underwhich  objects  can  be  given 
in  intuition.^  And  the  Prolegomena  distinguishes  understanding, 
as  the  faculty  of  judging,  from  the  senses,  to  which  perception  is 
referred.*  All  such  passages,  seeming  to  argue  for  the  abstractly 
logical  character  of  the  understanding  and  the  mere  inexplicable 
Gegebenheit  of  the  perceptible  world,  are  "contradicted  in  the 
most  glaring  manner  {atif  das  schreiendeste)  by  the  whole  of  the 
rest  of  his  doctrine  of  the  understanding,  of  its  categories,  and  of 
the  possibility  of  experience  as  he  explains  it  in  the  Transcen- 
dental Logic. "^  Hence  understanding  is  generally  regarded  by 
Kant  as  the  organizing  function  within  perceptual  experience 
itself,  which,  by  means  of  the  categories,  the  a  priori  indispensable 
conditions  of  all  possible  experience,  synthetically  combines, 
connects,  orders,  and  brings  to  intelligible  unity  the  manifold  of 
sensation,  and  thus  first  makes  'Nature,'  i.  e.,  organic  experience, 
possible.® 

1  Ibid. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  67  ff.;  H  ed.,  p.  135;  M.,  pp.  56  ff.,  747. 
3AV.  d.  r.  v.,  p.  89;  M.,  p.  74. 
*  Prolegomena,  Sections  20,  22. 
'G.,  I,  p.  562;  H.K.,  II,  p.  36. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V..  pp.  79,  94;  II  Aufl.  pp.  126  ff.  135  f--  I43  ff-.  iSPff-;  M.,  pp.  65  f., 
78,  747  i:  752  ff.,  762  ff. 


NATURE   AND   GENESIS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  1 7 

Schopenhauer,  curiously  enough,  interprets  all  such  passages 
as  meaning  that  the  understanding  is  a  distinctly  perceptual 
function,  as  in  his  own  theory  of  knowledge.  But  the  diametrical 
opposition  between  this  and  the  previous  manner  of  treating  the 
understanding,  prove  to  him  conclusively  the  validity  of  his 
original  contention.  He  says :  "  I  challenge  every  one  who  shares 
my  respect  towards  Kant  to  reconcile  these  contradictions  and 
to  show  that  in  his  doctrine  of  the  object  of  experience  and  the 
way  it  is  determined  by  the  activity  of  the  understanding  and 
its  twelve  functions,  Kant  thought  something  quite  distinct  and 
definite.  I  am  convinced  that  the  contradiction  I  have 
pointed  out,  which  extends  through  the  whole  Transcen- 
dental Logic,  is  the  real  reason  of  the  great  obscurity  of  its 
language."^  The  object  of  the  understanding  is  really  re- 
garded by  Kant  as  neither  a  perception  nor  a  conception,  but 
as  alone  making  experience  possible.  This  is  a  "deeply  rooted 
prejudice  in  Kant,  dead  to  all  investigation."-  Schopenhauer 
continues:  "It  is  certainly  not  the  perceived  object,  but  through 
the  conception  it  is  added  to  the  perception  by  thought,  as  some- 
thing corresponding  to  it;  and  now  the  perception  is  experience, 
and  has  value  and  truth,  which  it  thus  only  receives  through  the 
relation  to  a  conception  (in  diametrical  opposition  to  my  exposi- 
tion, according  to  which  the  conception  only  receives  value  and 
truth  from  the  perception)."^ 

This  is  the  way  Schopenhauer  reads  his  Kant.  The  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason,  he  thinks,  treats  experience  as  the  result  of  the 
conceptualizing  of  the  perceptual  material,  by  which  process  this 
material  of  sensation  first  becomes  organized  and  real.  Now  he 
finds  perception  in  no  need  of  such  conceptual  transformation, 
for  it  possesses  in  itself  all  the  concrete  reality  that  is  possible 
in  experience.  Thinking  owes  its  whole  significance  to  the  per- 
ceptual source  from  which  it  arises  through  abstraction.  "  If  we 
hold  firmly  to  this,  the  inadmissibleness  of  the  assumption  be- 
comes evident  that  the  perception  of  things  only  obtains  reality 
and  becomes  experience  through  the  thought  of  these  very  things 

iG.,  I.  pp.  563-564;  HK..  II,  p.  38- 
2G.,  I,  p.  564;  H.K.,  II,  p.  39- 
3G.,  I,  pp.  564-565;  H.K.,  II,  p.  39- 


1 8  SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

applying  its  twelve  categories.  Rather  in  perception  itself  the 
empirical  reality,  and  consequently  experience,  is  already 
given;  but  the  perception  itself  can  only  come  into  exist- 
ence by  the  application  to  sensation  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
causal  nexus,  which  is  the  one  function  of  the  understanding. 
Perception  is  accordingly  in  reality  intellectual,  which  is  just 
what  Kant  denies."^  What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  this  Kantian 
'object  of  experience,'  particular  and  j-et  not  in  space  and  time, 
because  not  perceptible  (thus  Schopenhauer),  an  object  of 
thought,  and  yet  not  an  abstract  conception,  at  once  perceptual 
and  conceptual,  yet  incapable  of  being  defined  in  terms  of  either 
perception  or  conception  alone? 

Schopenhauer  thinks  that  Kant  makes  a  triple  division:  (i) 
the  idea,  (2)  the  object  of  the  idea,  and  (3)  the  thing-in-itself. 
"The  first  belongs  to  the  sensibility,  which  in  its  case,  as  in  that 
of  sensation,  includes  the  pure  forms  of  perception,  space  and 
time.  The  second  belongs  to  the  understanding,  which  thinks  it 
through  its  twelve  categories.  The  third  lies  beyond  the  pos- 
sibility of  all  knowledge."-  The  confusion  seems  evident  to 
Schopenhauer:  "Theillicit  introduction  of  that  hybrid,  the  object 
of  the  idea,  is  the  source  of  Kant's  errors,"^  he  says.  All  we 
have  in  concrete  knowledge  and  experience  is  the  Vorstellung; 
"  if  we  desire  to  go  beyond  this  idea,  then  we  arrive  at  the  question 
as  to  the  thing-in-itself,  the  answer  to  which  is  the  theme  of  my 
whole  work  as  of  all  metaphysics  in  general."^  With  this  epis- 
temological  hybrid,  i.  e.,  the  'object  of  the  idea,'  "the  doctrine 
of  the  categories  as  conceptions  a  priori  also  falls  to  the  ground."^ 
Instead  of  assuming  (as  Schopenhauer  thinks  that  Kant  assumes) 
the  existence  of  an  intermediate  world  between  the  idea  and  the 
thing-in-itself,  as  the  sphere  of  operation  of  the  pure  understand- 
ing and  its  twelve  categories,  Schopenhauer  himself  repudiates 
the  entire  deduction  of  the  categories  as  fundamentally  false, 
explains  causality  as  the  only  valid  category,  and  describes  this 

iG.,  I,  p.  566;  H.K.,  II,  p.  40. 

2G.,  I,  p.  567;  H.K..  II.  p.  41;  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  io8f.;  M.,  pp.  89  f. 

'G.,  I,  p.  567;  H.K.,  II,  p.  41. 

^G.,  I,  pp.  567-568;  H.K.,  II,  p.  42. 

'G.,  I,  p.  567;  H.K..  II,  pp.  41-42. 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  19 

as  distinctly  perceptual  in  character,  thus  referring  all  objective 
relatedness  and  organization  to  the  causal  space-time  union  in 
perception,  and  distinguishing  the  latter  from  the  thing-in-itself 
alone.  All  objectivity,  all  real  knowledge,  is  perceptual  for 
Schopenhauer.  A  conception  is  a  check  drawn  on  the  bank  of 
perception :  its  validity  stands  or  falls  with  its  perceptual  deposit ; 
intrinsic  reality  it  has  none,  though,  as  an  abstraction,  it  may 
be  of  undeniable  instrumental  service.^ 

Schopenhauer's  argument  is  apparently  lucid  and  seems  to 
admit  of  no  variety  of  interpretations.  Does  it,  however,  repre- 
sent a  correspondingly  clear  understanding  of  Kant's  problem? 
What  is  the  significance  and  the  value  of  his  interpretation  and 
criticism  of  the  fundamental  method  of  the  Critical  epistemology? 

It  should  be  noted  that  Schopenhauer  does  not  recognize 
what,  after  all,  is  Kant's  real  distinction  between  understanding 
and  reason,  the  distinction,  namely,  between  understanding  as 
the  faculty  by  which  we  deal  with  the  conditioned  and  reason  as 
the  faculty  which  demands  the  unconditioned.  The  understand- 
ing itself  Kant  seems  to  treat  in  a  twofold  manner:  (i)  under- 
standing in  the  wider  sense,  as  the  fundamental  principle  ol 
objectivity  in  experience,  including  within  itself  the  immanently 
organizing  function  of  the  productive  imagination;  and  (2)^ 
understanding  in  the  narrower  sense,  as  the  faculty  of  judgment 
or  interpretation,  operating  primarily  through  the  categories.. 
This  distinction  is  of  great  importance  for  the  interpretation 
of  Kant's  pure  concepts  of  the  understanding;  and  it  should! 
be  noted  that  Kant  explicitly  limits  the  application  of  the 
understanding  to  finite  experience,  to  the  sphere  of  the  condi- 
tioned. On  the  other  hand,  Kant  holds:  "It  is  the  peculiar 
principle  of  reason  (in  its  logical  use)  to  find  for  every  conditioned 
knowledge  of  the  understanding  the  unconditioned,  whereby 
the  unity  of  that  knowledge  may  be  completed.  "^  The  pure 
concepts  of  the  understanding,  the  categories,  find  their  meaning 
and  their  sphere  of  operation  in  the  organic  interdependence  of 

'C/.,  in  this  connection,  Richter's  treatment  of  'Verstand'  and  'Vernunft'  as 
used  by  Kant  and  Schopenhauer,  Schopenhauer' s  Verhdltnis  zu  Kant  in  seinen 
Grundziigen,  pp.  144  ff. 

"^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  307;  M.,  p.  249. 


20  SCHOPENHA  UER'S  CRITICISM  OF  KA  NT. 

the  different  sides  of  conditioned  experience.  The  concepts 
of  pure  reason,  on  the  other  hand,  or  the  'Transcendental  Ideas, ' 
as  Kant  calls  them,  are  explicitly  concerned  with  the  uncondi- 
tioned ground  of  experience;  they  refer  to  "something  to  which 
all  experience  may  belong,  but  which  itself  can  never  become 
an  object  of  experience."^  In  this  sense  the  distinction  between 
pure  understanding  and  pure  reason,  in  Kant's  technical  pro- 
cedure, tends  to  correspond  to  the  distinction  between  theory  of 
knowledge  and  theory  of  reality.^ 

Whether  the  spirit  of  Kant's  epistemology  does  actually 
necessitate  the  conception  of  the  unconditioned,  and  of  a  corre- 
sponding faculty  of  pure  reason  to  deal  with  it,  is  a  problem  of 
too  weighty  a  character  to  be  disposed  of  at  the  outset,  and  its 
solution  cannot  and  need  not  be  undertaken  in  this  chapter. 
One  thing,  however,  is  certain :  whether  the  distinction  between 
the  understanding,  as  the  organizing  faculty  of  experience,  and 
reason,  as  the  faculty  of  the  beyond-experiential,  is  or  is  not 
consistent  with  the  fundamental  method  of  the  Critical  episte- 
mology, the  distinction  between  them  as  the  faculties  of  per- 
ception and  conception  respectively  is  surely  contrary  both  to 
the  spirit  and  to  the  letter  of  Kant's  procedure.  In  Kant's 
view  of  'experience,'  perception  and  conception  presuppose 
each  other  in  a  way  which  makes  it  impossible  to  define  knowl- 
edge in  terms  of  either  separately. 

Returning  to  Schopenhauer,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
his  whole  argument  is  specious.  The  fact  that  in  Kant's  admit- 
tedly confused  way  of  treating  perception  and  conception  he  sees 
nothing  but  a  solemn  warning  against  undue  adherence  to  an 
ideal  of  'architectonic  symmetry,'  shows  how  hopelessly  he 
misconceives  both  the  aim  and  the  fundamental  trend  of  Kant's 
'Critical'  method.^     Kant's  'confusion'  of  the  perceptual  and 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  311;  M.,  p.  253.  Cf.  the  introductory  sections  of  the  'Tran- 
scendental Dialectic'  especially  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  299  fif.,  305  ff.,  310  ff.,  322  ff.; 
M.,  pp.  242  ff.,  247  ff.,  252  ff.,  261  ff. 

2  Kant  regards  speculative  reason,  however,  as  incapable  of  attaining  knowledge 
of  ultimate  reality,  and  therefore  he  introduces  the  notion  of  practical  reason. 
But  this  problem  will  more  naturally  come  up  for  discussion  in  the  sequel. 

3  Mere  textual  criticism  of  Kant's  Critiques  is  sure  to  lead  one  astray,  unless 
the  fundamental  spirit  of  his  philosophy  is  kept  constantly  in  mind.     As  Richter 


NATURE  AND   GENESIS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  21 

the  conceptual  in  experience  is  to  be  regarded,  not  as  the  failure 
to  discriminate  ultimate  differences,  but  rather  as  the  imperfect 
realization  and  the  inadequate  expression  of  the  underlying 
essential  unity  of  concrete  experience,  which  cannot  be  reduced 
to  merely  perceptual  or  conceptual  terms.  Kant's  confusion 
is  the  confusion  of  depths  not  yet  clarified;  Schopenhauer's 
lucidity  manifests  epistemological  shallowness.  Later  idealism, 
of  course,  brought  to  light  much  that  escaped  Kant  himself; 
but  Kant  was  far  more  nearly  right  than  Schopenhauer  when  he 
said:  "Thoughts  ■without  contents  are  empty,  intuitions  without 
concepts  are  blind.  .  .  .  The  understanding  cannot  see,  the 
senses  cannot  think.  By  their  union  only  can  knowledge  be 
produced."^ 

The  fundamental  defect  of  Schopenhauer's  epistemology 
is  to  be  found  in  his  constant  endeavor  to  explain  one  abstract 
phase  of  experience  in  terms  of  another,  supposedly  prior,  phase, — 
really  the  vice  of  the  older  rationalism, — instead  of  reading 
both  into  the  organic  unity  which  embraces  both  and  derives 
its  own  meaning  precisely  from  such  systematization  of  aspects 
meaningless  in  abstract  isolation.  The  relation  between  the 
organizing  principles  of  experience  is  for  Kant,  not  one  of  formal 
subsumption,  but  of  organic  interdependence.  Experience  in- 
volves both  perception  and  conception,  the  one  as  much  as  the 
other;  its  progressive  organization  consists  in  the  gradual 
evolution  of  the  two,  which  unifies  them  in  one  concrete  process. 
The  perceptual  content  is  essentially  meaningful,  and  the 
application  of  the  categories  brings  out  what  is  implicit  in  it. 
Schopenhauer's  universals  are  the  universals  of  the  old  scholastic 
logic,  abstractions  which  do  not  exist  outside  of  its  text-books 
and  are  alien  to  concrete  experience.  Conception,  in  the  true 
Kantian  sense,  is  no  mere  attenuated  perception,  but  the  sig- 
nificant aspect  of  experience.     Conceptions,  or,  perhaps  better, 

puts  it:  "Es  ist  wirklich  nicht  so  schwer,  wenn  man  sich  nur  an  den  wortlichen 
Text  der  Kritiken  halt,  Rationalismus  und  Empirismus,  Dogmatismus  (im  weitesten 
Sinne)  und  Scepticismus,  Idealismus  und  Realismus  aus  ihnen  herauszulesen" 
{op.  cit.,  pp.  91-92).  And  again,  with  special  reference  to  Schopenhauer's  procedure: 
"Kantische  Elemente  hat  Schopenhauer  aufgenommen,  Kantisch  fortgebildet 
hat  er  sie  nicht"  {op.  cit.,  p.  77). 
iKr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  51;  M.,  p.  41. 


22  SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

meanings,  are  involved  in  experience  from  the  very  beginning; 
they  are  not  merely  its  abstract  terminus  ad  quern,  as  Schopen- 
hauer would  have  it.^  Universality  means,  not  erasure  of 
details  and  differences,  but  their  gradual  organization  from  a 
point  of  view  ever  growing  in  catholicity.  The  progress  of 
knowledge  is  not  from  perception  to  conception,  but  from  less 
concrete  to  more  concrete  organization  of  both. 
iG..  II.  p.  55;  H.K.,  II.  p.  213. 


CHAPTER  II. 

The  Principles  of  Organization  in  Experience:   The 

Deduction  and  The  Real  Significance  of 

The  Categories. 

Schopenhauer's  abstract  distinction  between  perception  and 
conception,  and  his  explanation  of  our  original  cognitive  experi- 
ence in  exclusively  perceptual  terms,  affect  most  vitally  his 
technical  discussion  of  Kant's  transcendental  deduction  of  the 
categories.  What  is  the  r61e  of  the  categories?  What  is  their 
function  in  the  genesis  of  experience?  In  what  respect  can  we 
conceive  of  perceptual  knowledge  as  depending  for  its  very 
being  upon  the  pure  (i.  e.,  for  Schopenhauer,  empty)  abstrac- 
tions of  thought,  derived  from  the  classification  of  judgments  as 
found  in  the  old  logic? 

Schopenhauer  interprets  Kant's  formal  procedure  as  follows: 
"Kant's  only  discovery,  which  is  based  upon  objective  compre- 
hension and  the  highest  human  thought,  is  the  apperqu  that 
time  and  space  are  known  by  us  a  priori.''^  "Gratified  by  this 
happy  hit,  "2  Schopenhauer  says,  Kant  pursued  the  tactics  which 
he  had  employed  in  discovering  the  pure  a  priori  constituents 
of  our  unformed  sensibility,  in  order  to  discover,  if  possible,  the 
a  priori  basis  of  the  'empirically  obtained'  conceptions.  A 
table  of  pure,  logically  grounded  forms  of  conception  was  needed, 
to  correspond  to  the  intuition-forms  of  space  and  time.  Kant 
therefore  hit  upon  the  table  of  judgments,  "out  of  which  he 
constructed,  as  well  as  he  could,  the  table  of  categories,  the 
doctrine  of  twelve  pure  a  priori  conceptions,  which  are  supposed 
to  be  the  conditions  of  our  thinking  those  very  things  the  per- 
ception of  which  is  conditioned  by  the  two  a  priori  forms  of  sen- 
sibility; thxxsdi  pure  understanding  now  corresponded  symmetri- 
cally to  a  pure  sensibility.''^     To  increase  the  plausibility  of  his 

iQ.,  I,  p.  572;  H.K.,  II.,  p.  47- 

2  Ibid. 

'G..  I,  p.  573;  H.K..  II,  p.  48. 

23 


24  SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

scheme  as  thus  formulated,  Kant  conceived  a  way  of  connecting 
a  priori  the  pure  forms  of  intuition  and  of  understanding.  Hence 
arose  the  notion  of  the  'schemata,'  or  'monograms  of  the  pure 
imagination,'  which,  according  to  Schopenhauer,  represent 
Kant's  attempt  to  bridge  over  the  chasm  between  the  world  of 
sensibility  and  the  fundamentally  disparate  world  of  thought. 

One's  attitude  towards  the  fundamental  objection  which 
Schopenhauer  makes  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Schematism  depends 
largely  upon  one's  acceptance  or  rejection  of  the  separation 
between  perception  and  thought,  between  the  content  and  the 
form  of  experience.  Schopenhauer  regards  Kant's  pure  con- 
ceptions of  the  understanding  as  having  no  organic  relation  to 
perception,  hence  as  incapable  of  involving  any  pure  schemata 
or  '  monograms  of  the  imagination '  corresponding  to  the  repre- 
sentative conceptions  or  phantasms  of  empirically  grounded 
thought.  That  Kant  was  led  into  such  an  illogical  position, — 
instead  of  demonstrating,  as  Schopenhauer  himself  professes  to 
do,  the  transformation  of  sensation  into  perception  by  means 
of  the  causal  principle, — Schopenhauer  considers  sufificiently 
accounted  for  by  the  above  psychological  explanation  of  the 
'Transcendental  Logic'  And  he  regards  this  explanation  as 
adequate  to  refute  Kant's  treatment  of  the  categories  and  of  the 
schematism. 

As  suggested  above,  Schopenahuer  is  not  incorrect  in  his 
analysis  of  the  technical  point  discussed,  but  he  draws  the 
wrong  conclusion  from  it.  In  the  'Transcendental  Esthetic' 
Kant  treats  space  and  time  as  the  pure  forms  of  intuition  or  im- 
mediate experience.  Hence  there  is  no  need  of  any  chapter  on  the 
Schematism  of  the  Pure  Forms  of  Sense  Intuition.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  'Analytic,'  however,  the  content  and  the  form 
of  experience  tend  to  assume  a  disparate,  if  not  antithetical, 
character.  The  rationalist  in  Kant  looks  for  principles  that  shall 
organize  the  content  of  perception,  as  it  were,  ah  extra.  As  a 
result,  the  functions  of  the  pure  understanding  tend  to  be  pre- 
sented as  formal  logical  concepts.  The  error  is  accentuated  by 
the  notion  of  a  definitely  fixed  number  of  fundamental  functions 
of  pure  experience.     In  consequence  of  this  rationalistic  bias, 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        25 

coupled  with  an  all  too  evident  fondness  for  abstract  symmetry 
("alle  gute  Dinge  sind  drei"),  which  Schopenhauer  clearly  per- 
ceives and  justly  satirizes,  a  conceptual  structure  is  evolved, 
which  is  to  condition  the  possibility  of  all  objective  experience 
and  shape  the  pattern  of  its  formal  organization.  In  his  attempt 
to  connect  perception  with  thought,  Kant  had  swung  over  to 
the  conceptual  side  to  such  an  extent  that  he  had  lost  contact 
with  concrete  experience.  To  span  this  gap  in  his  epistemology, 
he  now  proposes  the  doctrine  of  the  schemata,  which  are  to 
serve  as  ladders  to  let  the  categories  of  the  pure  understanding 
down  to  concrete  experience. 

But  this  gap  was  the  result  of  Kant's  own  too  abstract  formula- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  the  categories.  The  correct  solution  of 
the  difficulty,  therefore,  would  have  been  to  restate  the  theory  in 
a  more  nearly  consistent,  truly  instrumental  sense,  and  thus 
interpret  the  categories  in  their  true  nature  as  functions  operative 
in  concrete  experience,  immanently  determining  its  progressive 
organization, — not  to  span  the  artificial  gap  by  a  still  more 
artificial  bridge.  Kant,  instead  of  rectifying  his  initial  error, 
sought  to  extricate  himself  by  the  inadequate  doctrine  of  the 
schematism.  Schopenhauer,  however,  draws  a  different  conclu- 
sion from  Kant's  unsuccessful  attempt  to  connect  the  concepts 
of  the  understanding  with  the  a  priori  perceptions.  He  regards 
the  difficulty  resulting  from  Kant's  artificial  procedure  as  funda- 
mental and  insuperable.  That  is  to  say,  for  Schopenhauer 
perception  and  conception  can  never  be  co-ordinate  in  experience; 
thought  never  plays  the  part  of  immanent  organizer  in  the 
knowledge-process. 

It  must  be  frankly  admitted  that  Schopenhauer's  conclusion 
is  quite  natural,  if  one  is  satisfied  with  criticising  Kant's  artificial 
treatment  and  neglecting  the  deeper  implications  of  his  thought. 
But  if  modern  epistemology  is  to  find  any  real  significance  in 
Kant's  treatment  of  the  categories,  it  must  draw  a  moral  far 
different  from  Schopenhauer's  free  and  easy  one.  Instead  of 
arguing  from  the  futility  of  the  schematism  the  incapacity  of 
thought  for  immanently  determining  the  organization  of  expe- 
rience and  thus  making  its  objectivity  possible,  a  correct  diagnosis 


26  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

would  locate  the  trouble  in  Kant's  departing  from  his  own  ideal 
of  the  organization  of  experience  from  within  and  attempting  to 
explain  that  organization,  as  it  were,  ab  extra.  The  deduction  of 
the  categories,  therefore,  should  be  re-interpreted  in  the  true 
Kantian  spirit,  its  abstract  formalism  eliminated,  and  the  im- 
manent character  of  the  organizing  principles  of  experience 
clearly  emphasized.  This  would  obviate  the  difficulty  by 
showing  the  irrelevancy  and  the  needlessness  of  any  schemata. 

It  may  seem  unnecessary  to  have  insisted  so  much  upon 
Schopenhauer's  illegitimate  separation  of  conception  from  per- 
ception. But  the  fact  is  that  Schopenhauer  himself  finds  all 
of  Kant's  most  serious  epistemological  errors  to  be  due  to  this 
one  'inextricable  confusion.'  Thus  he  writes  at  the  beginning 
of  his  examination  of  the  categories:  "That  I  reject  the  whole 
doctrine  of  the  categories,  and  reckon  it  among  the  groundless 
assumptions  with  which  Kant  burdened  the  theory  of  knowledge, 
results  from  .  .  .  the  proof  of  the  contradictions  in  the  Tran- 
scendental Logic,  which  had  their  ground  in  the  confusion  of 
perception  and  abstract  knowledge.  .  .  ."^ 

The  abstractions  of  science,  Schopenhauer  admits,  have  the 
incomparable  advantage  over  mere  perception  that  they  enable 
us  to  comprehend,  within  the  compass  of  a  few  clearly  determined 
and  well-defined  conceptions,  the  manifold  of  phenomenal  expe- 
rience, and  to  reduce  its  multifarious  connections  to  uniformities 
capable  of  being  formulated.  Kant's  was  'a  bold  and  happy 
thought,'  to  isolate  the  purely  conceptual  and  exhibit  its  function 
in  the  development  of  abstract  knowledge.  But,  Schopenhauer 
insists,  Kant  should  have  recognized  the  indirect  character  of  his 
method.  In  effect,  he  says:  In  seeking  the  foundation-stones 
for  his  edifice  of  experience  in  the  formal  table  of  judgments, 
Kant  "may  be  compared  to  a  man  who  measures  the  height  of 
a  tower  by  its  shadow,  while  I  am  like  him  who  applies  the 
measuring-rule  directly  to  the  tower  itself."-  The  normal  forms 
of  the  combinations  of  conceptions,  schematically  embodied  in 
the  Table  of  Judgments,  are  of  various  origin.  Some  are  derived 
from  the  relatedness  obtaining  in  the  perceptual  world  of  the 

iG.,  I.  pp.  576-577;  H.K..  II,  p.  52. 
=  G..  I.  p.  577;H.K..  II.  p.  53- 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        2/ 

understanding.  Others,  again,  are  of  hybrid  origin,  due  to  the 
intermixture  of  perception  and  conception.  But  for  the  most 
part  the  judgment-forms  are  deducible  from  the  nature  of  reflec- 
tive knowledge  itself,  i.  e.,  directly  from  reason,  springing  as 
they  do  from  the  dictum  de  omni  et  nullo  and  from  the  four 
'metalogical  truths'  founded  on  the  conditions  of  all  thinking, 
to  wit:  the  laws  of  identity  and  contradiction,  and  the  principles 
of  excluded  middle  and  of  sufficient  reason.^ 

This  different  origin  of  the  various  judgment-forms  does  not 
affect  their  invariably  instrumental  role  in  the  process  of  expe- 
rience. Schopenhauer's  theory  of  judgment  can  apparently  be 
stated  in  a  few  words.  Judgment  is  the  connecting  link  between 
perception  and  conception,  "the  power  of  rightly  and  accurately 
carrying  over  into  abstract  consciousness  what  is  known  in 
perception,"  and  as  such  it  is  "the  mediator  between  under- 
standing and  reason. "2  The  erection  of  conceptual  structures 
upon  the  ground  of  manifold  perceptions  necessitates  a  coher- 
ence of  the  abstract  spheres  of  reference;  and  in  the  same  way 
as  the  elementary  comparison  of  concepts  (the  referring  of 
the  'predicate'  to  the  'subject')  yields  the  various  logical  judg- 
ments,' just  so  does  inference  result  from  the  interconnection  of 
completed  judgments.*  The  judging  process  itself  is  essentially 
reflective.  For,  while  the  content  of  judgment  is  originally  per- 
ceptual, "knowledge  of  perception  suffers  very  nearly  as  much 
change  when  it  is  taken  up  into  reflection  as  food  when  it  is 
taken  into  the  animal  organism  whose  forms  and  compounds  are 
determined  by  itself,  so  that  the  nature  of  the  food  can  no  longer 
be  recognized  from  the  result  they  produce."^  Only  conceptual 
outlines  can  enter  into  the  schematic  correlations  of  logical 
thought.  "An  individual  idea  cannot  be  the  subject  of  a  judg- 
ment, because  it  is  not  an  abstraction,  it  is  not  something  thought, 
but  something  perceived.  Every  conception,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  essentially  universal,  and  every  judgment  must  have  a  con- 

iG.,  III.  pp.  125  ff.;  Hillebr.,  pp.  127  ff. 

2G..  I,  p.  108;  H.K..  I.  p.  84. 

3G.,  I.  p.  81;  H.K..  I.  55- 

*G.,  II,  p.  128;  H.K.,  II.  p.  295- 

'G.,  I,  p.  579;  H.K..  II,  pp.  54  f- 


28  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

ception  as  its  subject."^  Explanatory  passages  of  this  kind  serve 
to  indicate  what  appears  to  be  Schopenhauer's  real  theory  of 
judgment.  A  'mediator  between  the  perceptual  and  the  con- 
ceptual,' he  calls  it;  but  its  members  are  abstract  concepts,  and 
the  entire  process  involved  in  their  manipulation  is  a  matter  of 
reflection,  of  reason. 

The  initial  definition  of  the  faculty  of  judgment  might  have 
suggested  to  a  modern  logician  the  possible  basis  for  an  organic 
theory  of  cognition.  In  the  judging  process  one  witnesses  the 
radiating  centre  of  the  various  aspects  of  knowledge,  which  here 
fuse  into  the  one  unity  of  concrete  thought.  But  Schopenhauer 
treats  the  judgment-members  as  discrete  in  character;  while  he 
regards  the  copula  as  non-significant  beyond  its  function  of 
reference,  he  nevertheless  conceives  the  process  of  judgment  as 
the  mere  comparison  of  two  concept-spheres  and  their  consequent 
union  or  separation.  The  judging  process,  thus  regarded,  cannot 
in  any  intelligible  sense  serve  as  the  connecting  link  of  perception 
and  conception,  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  process  can  connect 
two  fundamentally  different  spheres  of  reference  (as  perception 
and  conception  are  in  Schopenhauer's  theory),  and  still  remain 
an  organic,  unitary  whole. 

Kant's  technical  treatment  of  judgment  is  unnecessarily  ab- 
stract, but  its  implications  indicate  his  deeper  realization  of  the 
concretely  organizing  character  of  the  judging  process.  "All 
judgments,"  he  writes,  "are  functions  of  unity  among  our 
representations,  the  knowledge  of  an  object  being  brought  about, 
not  by  an  immediate  representation,  but  by  a  higher  one,  com- 
prehending this  and  several  others,  so  that  many  possible  cog- 
nitions are  collected  into  one."^  This  position  becomes  more 
adequately  defined,  and  the  unitary,  dynamic  character  of  the 
judgment-process  more  consistently  formulated,  by  later  idealism. 
Hegel's  discussion  of  the  matter,  in  the  lesser  Logic,  is  most 
suggestive.  In  the  introductory  sections  of  his  'Doctrine  of  the 
Notion',  Hegel  settles  once  for  all  the  question  of  the  organic 
nature  of  thought  and  judgment.     "It  is  a  mistake  to  imagine 

>G.,  II.  p.  123;  H.K.,  II,  p.  289. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  69;  M.,  p.  57. 


PRINCIPLES   OF  ORGANIZATION   IN   EXPERIENCE.        29 

that  the  objects  which  form  the  content  of  our  mental  ideas 
come  first  and  that  our  subjective  agency  then  supervenes,  and 
by  the  aforesaid  operation  of  abstraction,  and  by  colligating  the 
points  possessed  in  common  by  the  objects,  frames  notions  of 
them.  Rather  the  notion  is  the  genuine  first;  and  things  are 
what  they  are  through  the  action  of  the  notion  immanent  in 
them,  and  revealing  itself  in  them."^  And  again,  referring  more 
specially  to  the  process  of  judgment  itself,  he  says:  "It  is  .  .  . 
false  to  speak  of  a  combination  of  the  two  sides  in  a  judgment, 
if  we  understand  by  the  term  'combination'  to  imply  the  inde- 
pendent existence  of  the  combining  members  apart  from  the 
combination.  ...  To  form  a  notion  of  an  object  means  there- 
fore to  become  aware  of  its  notion:  and  when  we  proceed  to  a 
criticism  or  judgment  of  the  object,  we  are  not  performing  a 
subjective  act,  and  merely  ascribing  this  or  that  predicate  to  the 
object.  We  are,  on  the  contrary,  observing  the  object  in  the 
specific  character  imposed  by  its  notion.'"^ 

This  point  of  view  has  become  increasingly  significant  in 
recent  logical  theory.  Professor  Bosanquet,  for  example,  finds 
in  judgment  the  epitome  of  the  entire  procedure  of  knowledge. 
The  judgment-process  is  for  him  the  immanent  function  of  cogni- 
tive experience.  We  do  not  first  have  clearly  delimited  and 
defined  concepts,  which  we  then  compare  and  connect  or  disjoin 
as  the  case  may  be;  the  delimiting  and  defining  itself  of  concepts 
is  accomplished  precisely  by  means  of  this  judging  process,  and 
keeps  pace  with  its  actual  development.  The  progressive  organi- 
zation of  the  significant  elements  in  experience  corresponds  to  the 
technical  perfecting  of  the  judgmental  procedure.  The  genesis 
of  judgment  is  the  genesis  of  organized  dynamic  experience.  Its 
members  are  no  barren  abstractions  deprived  of  all  concrete 
meaning:  they  are  ideas  bearing  the  significant  essence  of  our 
manifold  experience.  The  true  subject  of  judgment,  therefore, 
is  no  mere  concept:  it  is  invariably  reality  itself.  "The  word 
and  its  reference — a  reference  to  some  continued  identity  in  the 
world  of  meanings — are  inextricably  welded  together. "^  Judg- 
ment and  experience,  conception  and  perception,  move  pari  passu. 

^  Logic,  p.  294.  ^Ibid.,  pp.  298,  299. 

^  Logic,  Vol.  I,  Oxford.  1888.  p.  73- 


30  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

But  let  us  return  to  Schopenhauer's  criticism.  The  radical 
fault  which  he  finds  with  Kant's  deduction  of  the  categories  is 
its  abstract  character.  From  formal  logical  materials  which  af- 
ford no  glimpse  of  concrete  reality,  Kant  has  fashioned  a  Table 
of  'pure  concepts,'  which  he  proffers  as  the  functions  of  organiza- 
tion and  necessity,  making  experience  itself  possible.  Schopen- 
hauer's protest  against  Kant's  abstract  formalism  is  most  just; 
but  his  own  theory  of  judgment  incapacitates  him  at  the  very 
start  from  indicating  the  fundamental  error;  namely,  the  formal, 
abstract  character  of  the  Table  of  Judgments  from  which  Kant 
would  derive  his  organizing  principles  of  experience.  This  should 
be  borne  in  mind  in  the  following  examination  of  Schopenhauer's 
criticism  of  Kant's  categories,  a  criticism  which  is  of  paramount 
significance,  although  actually  leading  to  conclusions  different 
from  those  intended  by  the  author. 

I.  Quantity. — Schopenhauer  is  brief  in  his  account  of  the 
Quantity  and  Quality  of  judgments,  and  of  the  categories  which 
Kant  deduces  from  them.  "The  so-called  Quantity  of  judgments 
springs  from  the  nature  of  concepts  as  such."^  The  inclusion  of 
one  concept  within  another  and  the  relations  arising  from  this 
process  he  regards  as  purely  abstract.  To  his  mind,  the  dif- 
ference between  the  universal  and  the  particular  judgment  is 
"very  slight  ";2  it  depends  upon  the  more  exact  definition  of  the 
wider  concept  (the  logical  subject)  in  the  judgment  called  uni- 
versal. Indeed,  to  Schopenhauer,  the  distinction  between  'Some 
trees  bear  gall-nuts '  and  '  All  oaks  bear  gall-nuts '  is  a  mere  matter 
of  the  "richness  of  the  language. "^  In  place  of  Kant's  three 
categories.  Unity,  Plurality,  Totality,  Schopenhauer  proposes  two 
forms  of  judgment.  Totality  and  Multiplicity,  their  application 
depending  upon  whether  the  subject-concept  is  taken  in  whole 
or  in  part.  Under  Totality  he  includes  the  individual  judgment: 
Socrates  =  all  Socrateses.^ 

Schopenhauer's  revision  of  the  Quantity  of  judgments,  equating 
as  it  does  the  singular  with  the  universal,  represents  a  way  of 

'G.,  I,  p.  580;  H.K..  II,  p.  56. 

2G..  I,  p.  581;  H.K.,  II,  p.  56. 

^Ibid. 

*G.,  I,  p.  610;  H.K.,  II.     .88. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION   IN  EXPERIENCE.        3  I 

looking  at  the  matter  which  was  not  unknown  to  Kant,  but 
which  he  attempted  to  transcend.^  Kant's  endeavor  to  present 
Totality  as  the  synthesis  of  Unity  and  Plurality,  suggests  the 
essentially  correct  solution  of  the  problem  which  later  Idealism 
formulated  more  adequately:  Totality  is  not  mere  Unity  any 
more  than  it  is  mere  Plurality,  but  the  concrete  synthesis  of  the 
two.  Schopenhauer's  distinction,  on  the  other  hand,  points  to 
the  abstract  separation  of  Unity  and  Plurality.  By  the  category 
of  Totality  Kant  sought  to  express  the  synthesis  of  the  manifold 
of  differences  and  the  universal  significance  which  pervades  them 
all  and  makes  them  fit  material  for  the  organizing  process  of 
thought. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  now  evident  that  the  merely  quantitative 
aspect  of  thought  lacks  the  organic  individuality  which  Kant 
endeavored  to  represent  by  the  category  of  Totality.  Looked 
at  from  this  point  of  view,  Schopenhauer's  criticism  is  not  tech- 
nically incorrect;  that  is,  in  the  sense  that  merely  quantitative 
Totality  is  not  the  synthesis  of  Unity  and  Plurality.  But  this 
only  suggests  the  valid  objections  of  modern  logic  to  any  arbitrary 
separation  of  the  qualitative  from  the  quantitative  in  experience. 
Every  principle  of  organization  derives  its  own  meaning  from 
its  interrelations  within  the  whole  of  experience;  and  the  category 
of  Totality  can  have  the  meaning  which  Kant  would  ascribe 
to  it  only  when  its  synthetic  character  passes  beyond  the  ab- 
stractly quantitative  phase  of  experience  and  becomes  the  im- 
manent principle  of  individuality  in  concrete  experience  itself. 

2,  Quality. — The  Quality  of  judgments  consists,  according  to 
Schopenhauer,  in  the  possibility  of  uniting  and  separating  the 
spheres  of  abstract  concepts,-  and  therefore  concerns  merely  the 
form  and  not  the  content  of  judgments.  The  content  is  per- 
ceptual in  origin,  and  Schopenhauer  finds  both  assertion  and 
denial  foreign  to  perception,  which  is  "complete,  subject  to  no 
doubt  or  error  "  f  whereas  the  quality-form  of  judgment,  affirming 
or  denying  the  connection  of  the  concept-spheres  in  question, 
lies  entirely  within  the  province  of  reason. 

^Cf.  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  71;  M.,  p.  59. 
2C/.  G.,  I,  p.  581;  H.K.,  II,  p.  57. 
3G.,  I,  p.  582;  H.K.,  II,  p.  57. 


32  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

The  infinite  judgment,  and  the  category^of  Limitation  deduced 
from  it  by  Kant,  Schopenhauer  summarily  rejects  as  "a  crotchet 
of  the  old  scholastics,  an  ingenuously  invented  stop-gap,  which 
does  not  even  require  to  be  explained."^  This,  coupled  with 
his  protest  against  the  unreal  character  of  abstract  affirmation 
and  denial,  is  a  just  criticism  of  Kant's  too  formal  treatment. 
Kant  does  not  sufficiently  recognize  the  inseparable  character 
of  affirmation  and  negation,  which  mutually  imply  and  involve 
each  other.  But  Schopenhauer,  on  the  other  hand,  would  ob- 
literate the  distinction  by  describing  concrete  reality  as  neither 
affirmed  nor  denied,  but  somehow  'being  immediately  present.' 
Affirmation  and  Negation  are  both  relative  to  the  ideal  signifi- 
cance of  experience  from  a  certain  point  of  view.  In  every 
negation  an  affirmation  is  implicit;  and,  conversely,  no  affirma- 
tion is  mere  abstract  assertion  but  contains  negative  factors 
which  delimit  its  sphere  of  reference.  Thus  Bradley  writes: 
"We  cannot  deny  without  also  affirming;  and  it  is  of  the  very 
last  importance,  whenever  we  deny,  to  get  as  clear  an  idea  as 
we  can  of  the  positive  ground  our  denial  rests  on."' 

Kant's  category  of  Limitation  might  well  embody  this  qualita- 
tive relativity  in  experience,  which  both  points  to,  and  explains, 
its  positive-negative  polarity.  But  Kant  tends  to  regard  the 
logical  antecedent  of  the  category  of  Limitation  as  the  infinite 
judgment,  understood  as  expressing  the  mere  absence  of  deter- 
mination, and  practically  amounting  to  what  logicians  have 
called  the  'privative'  judgment.  The  indefinite  division  of  the 
universe  of  discourse,  by  means  of  an  arbitrarily  chosen  char- 
acteristic which  provides  no  adequate  basis  of  distinction,  does 
not  yield  a  new  form  of  judgment,  but  indeed  makes  all  significant 
judging  impossible.  The  soul  'as  a  non-mortal  being'  (to  select 
Kant's  own  example^)  can  be  fit  material  for  judgment,  only 
when  it  is  explained  as  a  possible  material  for  thought,  by  a 
proper  understanding  of  the  significance  of  mortality  and  im- 
mortality. But  it  is  precisely  this  lack  of  understanding  of 
concrete  relationship  which  has  suggested  an  escape  from  the 

iG.,  I,  p.  582;  H.K.,  II,  p.  58- 
^Principles  of  Logic,  p.    120. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  72;  M.,  p.  60. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        33 

suspense  of  ignorance  into  the  abstract  indefiniteness  of   the 
'infinite'  judgment,  justly  criticised  by  recent  logicians.^ 

The  synthesis  of  afifirmation  and  negation  is  not  to  be  found 
in  their  confusion  but  in  their  organization.  Limitation  means, 
not  indefiniteness,  of  course,  but  concrete  interdependence,  and 
the  proper  delineation  of  the  sphere  of  reference.  As  Bosanquet 
says,  "Exclusion  by  Privation  rests  on  a  conviction,  won  by 
persistent  lack  of  afifirmation,  of  the  true  negative  limit  and 
external  contour  of  knowledge,  which  limit,  qua  the  true  limit, 
must  be  held  true  of  reality. "^  Schopenhauer's  rejection  of 
Kant's  'infinite  judgment'  does  not  necessarily  involve  a  return 
to  the  formal  separation  between  abstract  afifirmation  and  nega- 
tion, as  Schopenhauer  himself  seems  to  infer.  Rather  should 
'Limitation'  be  reinterpreted  to  mean  the  precise  indication  of 
the  context  which  embodies  within  itself  the  organization  of 
reality,  positive  and  negative,  and  gives  both  their  real  meaning 
for  experience;  in  the  same  way  as,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
Quantity,  abstract  Unity  and  abstract  Plurality  find  their  basis 
of  union  in  the  concrete  Totality  of  the  Individual. 

3.  Relation. — In  Kant's  view  there  are  three  fundamental  rela- 
tions involved  in  Judgment:  {a)  relation  of  predicate  to  subject, 
connecting  two  concepts  (categorical  judgment);  {h)  relation  of 
reason  and  consequent,  involving  the  logical  connection  of  two 
judgments,  the  separate  validity  of  each  remaining  undetermined 
(hypothetical  judgment);  (c)  relation  of  subdivided  knowledge 
and  of  the  collected  members  of  the  subdivision  to  each  other 
(disjunctive  judgment).  In  the  disjunctive  judgment,  the  rela- 
tion is  one  not  of  consequence  but  of  the  logical  opposition  of 
mutually  exclusive  alternatives,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the 
community  of  these  alternatives,  on  the  other  hand,  in  that  they 
are  complementary,  and,  taken  together,  "constitute  the  whole 
contents  of  one  given  knowledge."^ 

The  categorical   judgment,   according  to   Schopenhauer,   ex- 

iSee  in  this  connection  Sigwart,  Logic,  translated  by  Helen  Dendy,  Vol.  I, 
London,  1895.  pp.  127  fif.;  Bradley.  Principles  of  Logic,  pp.  109  ff.;  and  especially 
Bosanquet's  treatment  of  Privation,  which  seems  to  me  the  most  suggestive.  Logic, 
Vol.  I,  pp.  332  ff. 

"^  Logic,  Vol.  I,  p.  339- 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  74;  M..  p.  61;  Cf.  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  pp.  73  ff-;  M.,  pp.  60  ff. 


34  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

presses  "the  form  of  judgment  in  general,  in  its  strictest  sense. 
For,  strictly  speaking,  judging  merely  means  thinking,  the  com- 
bination of,  or  impossibility  of  combining,  the  spheres  of  the 
concepts. "1  But  it  is  a  misconception,  Schopenhauer  says,  to 
explain  the  subject  and  predicate  of  judgment  as  having  a 
"peculiar  and  special  correlative  in  perception,  substance  and 
accident."-  He  adds:  "I  shall  show  clearly  further  on  that  the 
conception  substance  has  no  other  true  content  than  that  of  the 
conception  matter."^  For  a  discussion  of  this  latter  point  the 
reader  is  referred  to  the  next  chapter,  where  Schopenhauer's 
theory  of  Substance  is  treated  at  greater  length. 

The  form  of  the  hypothetical  judgment  expresses  the  abstract 
connection  of  the  ratio  cognoscendi,  but  its  scope  of  application 
actually  includes  the  entire  world  of  ideas.  The  category  of 
causality  is  only  one  of  the  four  forms  of  the  Principle  of  Suf- 
ficient Reason,  and  the  causal  relation  does  not,  therefore,  exhaust 
the  logical  implications  of  the  hypothetical  in  experience,  as 
Kant  mistakenly  supposes  that  it  does,  when  he  derives  from  the 
hypothetical  judgment  merely  the  causal  category.  The  hypo- 
thetical judgment  is  for  Schopenhauer  the  logical  expression  of 
the  dependence  obtaining  in  experience,  and  formally  concerns 
the  dependence  of  completed  judgments  upon  each  other;  but 
this  its  formal  use  by  no  means  exhausts  its  significance. 

The  disjunctive  form  of  judgment,  in  a  similar  way,  expresses 
the  incompatibility  of  judgments  with  respect  to  each  other. 
Kant, — basing  on  the  fact  that  the  alternatives  in  complete 
disjunction,  while  being  incompatible  with  and  excluding  each 
other,  nevertheless,  if  taken  together,  exhaust  the  sphere  of 
reference  expressed  by  the  judgment, — deduces  from  what  he 
calls  the  'community'  of  logical  disjunctions  the  category  of 
Reciprocity.  Schopenhauer  emphatically  denies  the  validity  of 
the  deduction.  In  real  disjunction,  he  insists,  the  affirmation 
of  one  alternative  means  the  negation  of  all  the  rest,  hence  it 
could  by  no  means  serve  as  the  logical  basis  of  the  category  of 
Reciprocity,  in  which  the  affirmation  of  anything  involves  at 

>G.,  I,  p.  583;  H.K.,  II.  p.  59- 
5C/.  G.,  I,  pp.  584;  H.K.,  II,  p.  60. 
3G.,  I,  pp.  584-585;  H.K.,  II,  p.  60. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        35 

the  same  time  the  affirmation  of  everything  else  towards  which 
it  stands  in  a  'reciprocal'  relation.  "Therefore,"  he  says,  "un- 
questionably, the  real  logical  analogue  of  reciprocity  is  the  vicious 
circle,  for  in  it,  as  nominally  in  the  case  of  reciprocity,  what  is 
proved  is  also  the  pfoof,  and  conversely.  And  just  as  logic 
rejects  the  vicioUs  circle,  so  the  conception  of  reciprocity  ought 
to  be  banished  from  metaphysics."^ 

Thus  Schopenhauer  proceeds  "quite  seriously,  to  prove  that 
there  is  no  reciprocity  in  the  strict  sense. "^  A  proper  understand- 
ing of  the  nature  of  causality,  as  "the  law  according  to  which 
the  conditions  or  states  of  matter  which  appear  determine  their 
position  in  time,"^  a  law  regulating  our  entire  perceptual  world, 
would  show  clearly',  Schopenhauer  maintains,  the  empty,  false, 
and  invalid  character  of  the  conception  of  reciprocity.  The 
direction  of  the  causal  succession  is  by  no  means  a  matter  of 
indifference.  Cause  and  effect  are  no  vague,  interchangeable 
terms.  Cause  is  precisely  the  antecedent  state  of  matter  A, 
which  necessarily  evokes  the  consequent  state  of  matter  B.  The 
temporal  factor  is  of  the  very  first  importance  in  any  causal 
succession,  and  this  is  just  what  is  completely  left  out  of  account 
in  the  category  of  Reciprocity.  For,  in  calling  the  two  states  A 
and  5  'reciprocal/  Kant  virtually  asserts  "that  both  are  cause 
and  both  are  effect  of  each  other;  but  this  really  amounts  to 
saying  that  each  of  the  two  is  the  earlier  and  also  the  later;  thus 
it  is  an  absurdity."'* 

Causality  and  reciprocity  are  thus  incompatible;  and,  inas- 
much as  the  entire  world  of  perception  is  a  causally  connected 
world,  reciprocity  is  inadmissible  as  a  category  of  the  under- 
standing. In  the  realm  of  reason,  to  be  sure,  where  nothing 
'happens,'  e.  g.,  in  the  abstract  reasons  and  consequents  of  logic 
and  mathematics,  reciprocity  is  the  ruling  principle  precisely 
because  there  causality  as  the  category  of  perception  is  ruled  out. 
Thus,  Schopenhauer  concludes,  the  category  of  Reciprocity  is, 
in  the  first  place,  not  deducible  from  the  disjunctive  judgment, 

iG.,  I,  p.  585;  H.K.,  II.  p.  61. 

2G.,  I,  pp.  585-586;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  61-62. 

'G.,  I,  p.  586;  H.K.,  II,  p.  62. 

<G.,  I,  p.  586;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  62-63. 


36  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF    KANT. 

but  finds  its  logical  counterpart  in  the  vicious  circle,  and,  sec- 
ondly, it  is  untenable  as  a  category  of  the  understanding  (in 
Schopenhauer's  sense),  because  it  is  found  to  be  incompatible 
with  causality  and  causal  succession. 

Schopenhauer's  attitude  towards  reciprocity  is  quite  consistent 
with  his  interpretation  of  causality.  Having  described  the  per- 
ceptual order  in  exclusiv^ely  causal  terms,  and  having  defined  the 
law  of  causality  itself  as  meaning  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
dependence  of  any  state  of  matter  B  upon  a  preceding  state  A 
necessarily  evoking  it,  he  cannot  but  draw  the  logical  conclusion 
that  in  such  a  perceptual  world,  in  which  such  a  law  of  causality 
holds  complete  sway,  organic  interaction  in  the  broad  sense,  or 
reciprocity,  is  inadmissible. 

Does  it  follow,  however,  that  Reciprocity  is  inadmissible  as  a 
category  of  concrete  experience?  If  the  causal  category  is  really 
to  express  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason  in  the  world  of 
events,  if  one  is  to  reduce  to  it  all  the  twelve  categories  of  the 
understanding,  it  must  itself  be  conceived  in  a  far  broader  sense 
than  Schopenhauer  allows.  Concrete  experience  is  too  complex 
a  system  to  be  adequately  dealt  with  from  the  point  of  view  of 
'causality'  reduced  to  terms  of  mere  temporal  succession.  The 
unitary  character  of  experience,  its  essentially  organic  nature, 
means  just  this:  that  every  element,  every  factor  in  it,  obtains 
its  being  and  its  essence  precisely  by  virtue  of  its  relations  to  the 
rest  of  the  system.  And  these  relations  are  not  of  mere  abstract 
dependence.  The  dependence  in  experience  is  organic  interde- 
pendence: the  entire  process  is  one  of  constant  give-and-take,  a 
process  of  progressive  organization.  The  causal  category,  as 
Schopenhauer  defines  it,  is  a  correct  enough  statement  of  this 
interdependence  regarded  from  one  particular  point  of  view,  and, 
in  its  abstract  form,  it  is  indispensable  for  the  procedure  of  phys- 
ical science,  though  not  necessarily  adequate  for  all  purposes  even 
of  physical  science.^  But  this  cannot  be  used  as  an  argument 
against  the  category  of  reciprocity,  for  the  reason  that  reciprocity 
takes  a  less  abstract  view  of  experience  than  causality  does.  The 
category  of  reciprocity  expresses  a  deeper  recognition  of  the 

^Cf.  Bosanquet's  pertinent  remarks  on  the  conception  of  'ground,'  as  implied 
in  the  procedure  of  physical  science.     Logic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  264  ff. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        37 

concrete  organization  of  experience;  as  Hegel  puts  it,  "reciprocal 
action  realises  the  causal  relation  in  its  complete  development."  ^ 
Kant's  account  of  reciprocity  is  far  from  clear  or  adequate, 
but  the  principle  of  in/erdependence  in  the  organization  of  expe- 
rience is  indispensable  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Critical 
method,  and,  indeed,  from  the  point  of  view  of  science.  In  tak- 
ing too  narrow  a  point  of  view,  and  failing  to  realize  the  inevitably 
instrumental  character  of  all  categories,  Schopenhauer  displays 
all  of  Kant's  dogmatic  tendency  and  carries  Kant's  initial  error 
to  its  logical  extreme. 

4.  Modality. — Schopenhauer  finds  Kant's  reasoning  much  more 
consistent  in  the  case  of  the  categories  of  Modality.     In  contrast 
to  the   "willkiirlichsten  Zwange"^  characterizing  the  previous 
'deductions,'  the  categories  of  Modality  are  really  derivable  from 
the  forms  of  judgments  corresponding  to  them.     "Thus  that  it 
is  the  conceptions  of  the  possible,  the  actual,  and  the  necessary 
which  occasion  the  problematic,  assertatory,  and  apodictic  forms 
of  judgment,  is  perfectly  true;  but,"  Schopenhauer  continues, 
"that  those  conceptions  are  special,  original  forms  of  knowledge 
of  the  understanding  which  cannot  be  further  deduced  is  not 
true."'     The    knowledge    of    necessity,    Schopenhauer    asserts, 
springs  directly  from  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason,  the  one 
original  form  of  all  knowledge.     The  conceptions  of  contingency,, 
possibility,  actuality,  and  impossibility,  on  the  other  hand,  arise^ 
only  through  the  conflict  of  abstract  and  intuitive  knowledge.*^ 
Schopenhauer  elucidates  his  point  of  view  by  analyzing  the 
notion  of  necessity  at  some  length,  showing  it  to  be  nothing  more 
than  the  application  of  the  general  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason. 
"The  conception  of  necessity,"  he  emphatically  declares,  "con- 
tains absolutely  nothing  more  than  this  dependence,  this  being 
established  through  something  else,  and  this  inevitably  following 
from  it."^  Accordingly,  the  four  forms  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient 
Reason  manifest  the  four  kinds  of  necessity  in  experience:  logical, 
physical,  mathematical,  and  moral.^ 

^  Logic,  p.  280.  ^G.,  I,  p.  590. 

3G.,  I,  p.  590;  H.K.,  II,  p.  66. 

*C/.  G.,  I,  p.  590;  H.K.,  II,  p.  67. 

6  Ibid. 

^Cf.  G.,  Ill,  p.  171;  Hillebr.,  p.  182. 


38  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

One  should  keep  clearly  in  mind  that,  while  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason  itself,  being  a  '  metalogical  truth,'  is  axiomatic 
and  incapable  of  proof,  nevertheless  everything  which  comes 
under  its  regulation,  has  its  meaning,  truth,  and  reality  precisely 
in  reference  to  something  else.  Hence,  Schopenhauer  insists, 
the  thoroughly  relative  character  of  all  necessity  becomes  evident. 
Nothing  is  necessary  in  itself,  but  solely  by  virtue  of  something 
else  upon  which  it  depends  and  in  which  it  finds  its  meaning. 
Necessity  is  thus  the  general  way  of  expressing  this  coherence, 
this  multiform  organization  in  experience,  of  which  the  Principle 
of  Sufficient  Reason  is,  for  Schopenhauer,  the  most  general 
statement.  If  once  this  relative  character  of  necessity  is  com- 
prehended, the  meaning  of  contingency  becomes  obvious.  Kant's 
confusion  on  this  point  is  due  to  his  adherence  to  the  abstract 
rationalistic  notion  of  the  contingent  (as  that  of  which  the  non- 
existence is  possible),  opposed,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the  necessary 
(that  which  cannot  possibly  not  be),  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  the  impossible  (that  which  cannot  possibly  be).^  This  Aristo- 
telian conception  of  the  contingent^  in  Kant  results  from  "sticking 
to  abstract  conceptions  without  going  back  to  the  concrete  and 
perceptible."^  As  a  matter  of  fact,  contingency  is  nothing  more 
jior  less  than  the  denial  of  necessity  in  a  particular  case,  i.  e., 
'"absence  of  the  connection  expressed  by  the  principle  of  sufficient 
treason. "* 

Contingency  is  relative,  just  as  necessity  is  relative,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  Every  thing,  every  event  in  the  actual  world 
"is  always  at  once  necessary  and  contingent;  necessary  in  relation 
to  the  one  condition  which  is  its  cause;  contingent  in  relation  to 
everything  else."^  The  absolutely  contingent  would  be  some- 
thing out  of  all  relation:  a  thought  as  meaningless,  Schopenhauer 
insists,  as  the  absolutely  necessary,  dependent  upon  nothing  else 
in  particular.     In  both  necessity  and  contingency  the  mind  turns 

iC/.  K.  d.  r.  v.,  II  ed.,  p.  301;  M.,  p.  198;  G..  I,  p.  594;  H.K.,  II.  p.  70. 
^  Ibid.    Schopenhauer  refers  here  to  De  generatione  et  con uptione,  Lib.  II,  C.-9 
et  II. 

'G..  I.  p.  594;  H.K..  II,  p.  71.  •...-. 

*G.,  I,  p.  591;  H.K.,  II,  p.  67. 
'G.,  I.  p.  591;  H.K.,  II,  p.  68. 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN   EXPERIENCE.        39 

back  in  search  of  explanation ;  the  necessary  and  the  contingent 
thus  mean  merely  the  relevant  and  the  irrelevant  in  the  process 
of  organization.  If  one  considers  merely  the  given  event  by 
itself,  merely  the  eflfect,  without  looking  for  the  explanatory 
cause  which  necessitates  it  and  makes  it  contingent  with  respect 
to  everything  else,  then  one  understands  the  meaning  of  the 
immediately  existing,  the  actual,  the  thing  as  directly  appre- 
hended. The  actual  in  nature,  however,  is  always  causally  re- 
lated, hence  also  necessary  here  and  now.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  mind  abstracts  from  this  'here'  and  'now,'  and  presents  to 
itself  all  the  laws  of  nature  and  thought,  physical  and  meta- 
physical, i.  e.,  known  to  us  a  posteriori  and  a  priori  respectively/ 
then  the  conception  of  possibility  arises,  which  means  compati- 
bility with  our  conceptual  systems  and  laws,  without  reference 
to  any  particular  time  and  place.  That  which  is  inadmissible 
even  from  this  abstract  point  of  view,  Schopenhauer  calls  the 
impossible.  This  development  of  the  conceptions  of  necessity, 
actuality  (existence),  and  possibility,  showing  as  it  does  their 
common  basis  in  the  one  Principle  of  Sufificient  Reason,  demon- 
strates, Schopenhauer  asserts,  "  how  entirely  groundless  is  Kant's 
assumption  of  three  special  functions  of  the  understanding  for 
these  three  conceptions. "^ 

A  comparison  of  this  outline  of  Schopenhauer's  conclusions 
with  Kant's  summary  of  his  own  treatment  of  the  modality  of 
judgments,  will  illustrate  the  difference  between  the  two  positions. 
Kant  says:  "As  in  this  way  everything  is  arranged  step  by  step 
in  the  understanding,  inasmuch  as  we  begin  with  judging  prob- 
lematically, then  proceed  to  an  assertory  acceptation,  and  finally 
maintain  our  proposition  as  inseparably  united  with  the  under- 
standing, that  is  as  necessary  and  apodictic,  we  may  be  allowed 
to  call  these  three  functions  of  modality  so  many  varieties  or 
momenta  of  thought."^  The  three  characteristic  stages  in  the 
logical  progression  might  well  indicate  three  points  of  view  in  the 
self-organization  of  experience,  and  in  this  sense  Kant  may  be 
justified  in  distinguishing  three  categories  of  Modality.     Never- 

iG.,  I.  p.  592;  H.K.,  II.  p.  69. 
^G..  I,  p.  593;  H.K..  II.  p.  69. 
2Kr.  d.  r.  V..  p.  76;  M..  p.  63. 


40  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

theless  Kant's  distinctions  are  too  sharp  and  abstract:  while  he 
suggests  a  process  of  logical  development  in  the  passage  just 
quoted,  he  fails  to  explain  the  matter  adequately  and  clearly  to 
emphasize  the  essential  interdependence  of  these  'momenta  of 
thought,'  which  involve  each  other  in  the  systematic  organization 
of  experience.^  On  the  other  hand,  Schopenhauer  is  quite  unable 
to  realize  the  organic  character  of  concrete  experience,  which 
implies,  not  the  absorption  of  possibility  and  actuality  into  neces- 
sity, but  their  proper  correlation  in  the  systematic  whole.  In 
his  constant  tendency  to  make  hard  and  fast  distinctions,  to  the 
neglect  of  the  concrete  unity  of  the  system  of  experience,  Schopen- 
hauer represents  what  Hegel  called  '  the  standpoint  of  the  under- 
standing,' As  Professor  Bosanquet  says:  "The  real  prophet  of 
the  understanding  .  .  .  was  Schopenhauer.  His  treatment  of 
the  principle  of  sufficient  reason  as  at  once  the  fundamental  axiom 
of  human  science  and  the  innate  source  of  its  illusions,  forms  an 
ultimate  and  irreversible  criticism  on  the  aspect  of  intelligence 
which  consists,  to  sum  up  its  nature  in  a  popular  but  not  in- 
accurate phrase,  in  explaining  everything  by  something  else — 
a  process  which  taken  by  itself  is  necessarily  unending  and  un- 
satisfying."^ 

The  constant  protest  which  Schopenhauer  makes  against  "the 
inadmissibility  and  utter  groundlessness  of  the  assumption  of 
twelve  special  functions  of  the  understanding,"^  is  quite  modern 
in  so  far  as  it  insists  upon  the  unitary  character  of  the  principle 
of  objectivity  in  experience.  The  notion  of  a  numerically  fixed 
table  of  organizing  principles  conditioning  the  possibility  of  expe- 
rience, is  diametrically  opposed  to  any  consistently  organic  theory 
of  knowledge.  The  desire  for  'architectonic  symmetry'  made 
Kant  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  concrete  experience  follows,  not 
the  formal  classifications  of  the  logician,  but  its  own  immanent 
principles  of  interdependence.  The  categories  are  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  the  functions  of  thought  by  means  of  which  we  can 
recognize  the  objectivity  or  coherence  of  experience  from  the 

'C/.  in  this  connection  Bosanquet's  analysis  and  criticism  of  Kant's  treatment 
of  Modality,  Logic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  377  ff. 
^Op.  cit..  Vol.  II.  pp.  81-82. 
3G.,  I.  p.  598;  H.K.,  II.  p.  75- 


PRINCIPLES  OF  ORGANIZATION  IN  EXPERIENCE.        4 1 

various  points  of  view  that  have  proved  permanently  significant 
in  the  development  of  the  special  sciences  and  of  the  various 
philosophical  disciplines.  Every  clearly  defined  point  of  view 
from  which  we  can  study  experience  to  permanent  advantage  is 
itself  a  category.  The  exact  number  of  valid  categories  is  thus 
a  matter  of  vain  speculation.  The  'roots'  of  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason,  the  categories  of  experience,  are  neither  twelve, 
nor  four,  nor  twelve  times  four;  their  number  is  constantly  vari- 
able and  'their  name  is  legion.'  The  essentially  functional 
character  of  the  principles  by  means  of  which  we  deal  with  the 
concrete  organization  of  experience,  when  duly  recognized,  shows 
the  impossibility  of  any  complete  enumeration. 

The  categories,  then,  are  exclusively  instrumental  in  character; 
their  truth  is  in  no  sense  abstractly  fixed  and  immutable.  Kant's 
conception  of  their  fixedness  is  but  a  relic  of  the  'eternal  truths' 
of  the  older  rationalism.  Nothing  is  more  evident  in  recent 
theory  of  knowledge  than  the  tendency  to  realize  the  non-static 
and  developing  character  of  all  categories.  The  proof  of  all 
principles  of  organization  in  science  and  philosophy,  the  only 
test  of  their  validity,  is  to  be  found  precisely  in  their  ability  to 
organize.  Science  and  philosophy  alike  are  a  continuous  re- 
construction and  restatement  of  categories,  a  perpetual  striving 
after  ever  more  adequate  formulations  of  the  coherence  immanent 
in  experience. 

It  is  unfortunate,  though  not  difficult  to  explain,  that  Schopen- 
hauer, whose  keen  criticism  of  the  doctrine  of  the  categories  had 
disclosed  so  many  of  its  flaws,  should  have  overlooked  one  of 
Kant's  most  questionable  distinctions,  namely,  that  which  he 
makes  between  'constitutive'  and  'regulative'  principles.  This 
distinction  is  employed  by  Kant  with  little  consistency,  although 
the  tendency  is  to  discriminate  between:  (a)  the  fundamental 
forms  of  intuition,  the  productive  imagination,  and  the  functions 
of  thought,  which  condition  the  possibility  of  all  experience  and 
'constitute'  its  organization;  and  {h)  the  rational  assumptions 
which,  while  not  determining  the  actual  form  of  experience, 
serve  to  rationalize  the  moral  order  and  the  aesthetic  judgment. 
The  distinction,  otherwise  expressed,  is  between  the  mechanical 


42  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

categories  of  the  Understanding,  which  Kant  calls  'constitutive,' 
and  the  teleological  categories,  the  postulates  of  Practical  Reason 
and  of  the  Esthetic  Judgment,  which  he  regards  as  'regulative.'^ 

The  incompatibility  of  this  hard  and  fast  distinction  with  any 
interpretation  of  experience  which  attempts  to  do  justice  to  its 
organic  character  is  amply  illustrated  in  Kant's  own  technical 
procedure.  The  teleological  categories  are  declared  to  be  merely 
'regulative,'  because  not  'constitutive'  of  experience  mechani- 
cally considered.  But  are  the  mechanical  {i.  e.,  'constitutive') 
categories  constitutive  of  moral  and  aesthetic  experience?  Such 
considerations,  which  Kant  would  have  been  the  last  to  take 
lightly,  should  have  warned  him  of  the  untenability  of  a  dis- 
tinction that  negates  the  immanent  unity  of  experience,  which 
is  the  fundamental  postulate  of  the  Critical  philosophy. 

The  'Transcendental  Dialectic'  aims  to  show  that  the  categories 
are  invalid,  and,  indeed,  without  significance,  if  applied  beyond 
the  sphere  of  'possible  experience.'  But  Kant  fails  to  draw  the 
important,  if,  to  us,  fairly  obvious  conclusion  that  all  categories 
as  such,  whether  theoretical,  practical,  or  aesthetic,  are  instru- 
mental and  essentially  regulative,  i.  e.,  that  every  valid  principle 
is  valid  only  within  its  specific  sphere  of  application,  true  (in  the 
complete  sense)  only  from  a  certain  definite  point  of  view.  Just 
because  of  this  purely  instrumental  significance  of  all  the  cate- 
gories, they  lose  all  meaning  if  taken  out  of  their  proper  context. 
And  this  is  the  real  significance  of  the '  Transcendental  Dialectic  ' : 
it  shows  the  futility  of  confusing  the  various  aspects  of  experience 
with  each  other,  and  the  necessity  of  rejecting  all  'transcendent' 
principles  of  explanation  as  incompatible  with  the  Critical  theory 
of  experience. 

The  elucidation  and  justification  of  this  contention  will  be 
the  object  of  discussion  in  the  next  chapter. 

1  Regarding  this  whole  problem,  c/.  Professor  Albee's  article  on  "The  Significance 
of  Methodological  Principles,"  in  The  Philosophical  Review,  1906,  pp.  267-276, 
esp.  pp.  270  a. 


CHAPTER   III. 

The  Scope  and  Limits  of  Experience:  Transcen- 
dental Dialectic. 

The  real  distinction  between  Understanding  and  Reason  wliich 
Kant  makes  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  and  which  he  sub- 
stantially maintains  throughout  the  'Dialectic',  is  the  distinction 
between  understanding  as  the  faculty  which  deals  with  the  con- 
ditioned and  reason  as  the  faculty  which  demands  the  uncondi- 
tioned. Although,  as  already  observed  in  Chapter  I,^  Schopen- 
hauer does  not  at  first  explicitly  recognize  this,  Kant's  real 
distinction  between  understanding  and  reason,  nevertheless,  in 
his  examination  of  the  'Transcendental  Dialectic,'  he  attempts  to 
account  for  the  origin  of  the  notion  of  the  unconditioned  and  to 
point  out  its  role  in  Kant's  philosophy.  "It  is  the  peculiar 
principle  of  reason  (in  its  logical  use),"  Kant  says,  "to  find  for 
every  conditioned  knowledge  of  the  understanding  the  uncon- 
ditioned, whereby  the  unity  of  that  knowledge  may  be  com- 
pleted."^  Now  Schopenhauer  insists  that  the  whole  plausibility 
of  Kant's  conception  is  due  to  its  abstractness.  Kant's  argument 
is  summarized  by  Schopenhauer  as  follows:  "If  the  conditioned 
is  given,  the  totality  of  its  conditions  must  also  be  given,  and 
therefore  also  the  unconditioned,  through  which  alone  that  totality 
becomes  complete. "^  But,  Schopenhauer  argues,  this  'totality 
of  the  conditions  of  everything  conditioned'  is  contained  in  its 
nearest  ground  or  reason  from  which  it  directly  proceeds,  and 
which  is  only  thus  a  sufficient  reason  or  ground.*  In  the  alter- 
nating series  of  conditioned  and  conditioning  states,  "as  each 
link  is  laid  aside  the  chain  is  broken,  and  the  claim  of  the  principle 
of  sufficient  reason  entirely  satisfied,  it  arises  anew  because  the 
condition  becomes  the  conditioned."^     This  is  the  actual  modus 

^Cf.  above,  pp.  14  ff.,  19  ff. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  307;  M..  p.  249. 
3G.,  I.  p.  612;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  90-91- 
<C/.,  G.,  I,  pp.  613-614;  H.K.,  II,  p.  92. 
«G..  I.  p.  614;  H.K..  II.  p.  92. 

43 


44  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

operandi  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason.  "Only  through 
an  arbitrary  abstraction,"  Schopenhauer  says,  "is  a  series  of 
causes  and  effects  regarded  as  a  series  of  causes  alone,  which 
exists  merely  on  account  of  the  last  efifect,  and  is  therefore 
demanded  as  its  sufficient  reason."^ 

The  unconditioned  is  unthinkable;  and  Kant  himself,  of  course, 
does  not  claim  objective  validity  for  the  conception.  He  does, 
however,  regard  the  demand  of  reason  for  the  unconditioned  as 
a  regulative  principle,  "subjectively  necessary. "^  The  employ- 
ment of  reason  in  this  sense,  as  the  faculty  which  demands  the 
unconditioned,  offers  Kant  a  great  opportunity  for  satisfying 
his  ideal  of  'architectonic  symmetry.'  Corresponding  to  the 
three  categories  of  relation,  Kant  finds  three  syntheses  of  reason, 
each  of  which  yields  a  special  unconditioned:  "First,  the  uncon- 
ditioned of  the  categorical  synthesis  in  a  subject;  secondly,  the 
unconditioned  of  the  hypothetical  synthesis  of  the  members  of  a 
series;  thirdly,  the  unconditioned  of  the  disjunctive  synthesis  of 
the  parts  of  a  system. "'  The  'Dialectic'  is  thus  divided  by  Kant 
into  three  parts,  dealing  respectively  with  the  refutation  of 
rational  psychology,  rational  cosmology,  and  rational  theology. 
Now,  while  it  is  doubtless  true  that  these  are  "the  three  principal 
subjects  round  which  the  whole  of  philosophy  under  the  influence 
of  Christianity,  from  the  Scholastics  down  to  Christian  Wolff,  has 
turned,"^  Schopenhauer  counts  it  an  error  on  the  part  of  Kant 
that  he  accepts  without  question  these  'transcendental  ideas' 
as  the  product  of  the  essential  nature  of  reason,  instead  of  recog- 
nizing them  for  what  they  really  are,  the  artifacts  of  scholastic 
theology.  An  historical  investigation  into  the  rise  and  extent 
of  theistic  belief,  Schopenhauer  maintains,  would  have  shown 
Kant  its  actual  role  in  philosophical  thought,  and  would  have 
indicated  the  artificiality  of  these  so-called  'transcendental  ideas.' 
As  it  is,  Kant  is  now  involved  in  "an  unfortunate  necessity  .  .  . 
in  that  he  makes  these  three  conceptions  spring  necessarily  from 
the  nature  of  reason,  and  yet  explains  that  they  are  untenable 

>G.,  I,  p.  614;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  92-93. 
2G.,  I.  p.  616;  H.K..  II,  p.  95. 
'Xr.  d.  r.  v.,  p.  323;  M.,  p.  262. 
*G.,  I,  p.  618;  H.K.,  II,  p.  97. 


SCOPE  AND   LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  45 

and  unverifiable  by  the  reason,  and  thus  makes  the  reason  itself 
a  sophisticator."^ 

The  real  value  and  significance  of  Schopenhauer's  rejection  of 
the  unconditioned  can  be  better  appreciated  after  an  examination 
of  his  detailed  criticism  of  the  'Transcendental  Dialectic*  Be- 
fore proceeding  to  this,  however,  mention  should  be  made  of  a 
technical  point  which  Schopenhauer  raises  in  criticising  Kant's 
use  of  the  term  '  Idea.' 

Schopenhauer  is  doubtless  right  in  holding  that  Kant's  use 
of  the  term  'Idea'  is  essentially  different  from  Plato's.  By  his 
'Ideas'  Plato  sought  to  represent  the  unchanging,  the  permanent 
behind  this  our  world  of  fleeting  shadows.  He  regarded  the 
'Ideas'  as  the  archetypes  of  our  multiform  experience,  speculative 
and  mathematical  as  well  as  practical.  Kant,  however,  seizing 
upon  the  'transcendent'  character  of  the  'Ideas,'  employs  the 
term  to  denote  his  own  practical  'as  ifs.'  But  the  potential 
perceptibility  of  the  Platonic '  Idea'  is  incompatible  with  the  mean- 
ing which  Kant  reads  into  Plato's  doctrine,  and  in  so  far  Schopen- 
hauer's criticism  is  quite  just. 

This,  however,  does  not  mean  that  Schopenhauer's  own  con- 
ception of  the  Platonic  'Idea,'  as  developed  in  Book  III  of  The 
World  as  Will  and  Idea,  is  true  to  the  spirit  of  the  original  Platonic 
doctrine.  If  Kant  unduly  emphasizes  the  non-empirical  char- 
acter of  the  '  Ideas,'  to  support  his  own  doctrine  of  teleological 
postulates,  Schopenhauer,  in  a  similarly  abstract  way,  makes 
use  of  their  archetypal  character  of  permanence  and  their  poten- 
tial perceptibility,  in  order  to  secure  the  prestige  of  a  great  name 
in  support  of  his  endeavor  to  span  the  chasm  between  his  two 
worlds  of  Idea  and  Will  by  means  of  his  Theory  of  Art.  Neither 
Kant's  nor  Schopenhauer's  use  of  the  term  'Idea'  contributes  in 
any  real  sense  to  the  actual  historical  criticism  of  Plato's  doctrine, 
although  their  interpretations  of  the  term  are  of  undeniable  sig- 
nificance for  the  understanding  of  their  own  respective  systems. 
I.  Rational  Psychology. — Schopenhauer  admits  that  Kant's 
refutation  of  rational  psychology  "has  as  a  whole  very  great 
merit  and  much  truth. "^     But  he  criticises  Kant  for  neglecting 


iG..  I,  p.  620;  H.K.,  ir,  p.  g 
«G..  I,  p.  621;  H.K.,  II,  p.  I 


99. 

[00. 


46  SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

the  historical  origin  of  the  notion  of  the  soul,  in  order  to  deduce 
it,  for  the  sake  of  'architectonic  symmetry,'  from  the  paralogism 
of  substantiality,  "by  applying  the  demand  for  the  unconditioned 
to  the  conception  of  substance,  which  is  the  first  category  of 
relation. "1 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Schopenhauer  says,  the  actual  proof  is 
based  upon  a  pure  intuition  of  time.  The  succession  of  time, 
Kant  argues,  is  unintelligible  without  the  assumption  of  an  under- 
lying permanent;  change  involves  the  changeless:  "Substances, 
therefore  (as  phenomena)  are  the  true  substrata  of  all  determina- 
tions of  time. "2  Now  "it  is  false,"  Schopenhauer  says,  "that 
in  mere  time  there  is  simultaneity  and  duration;  these  ideas  only 
arise  from  the  union  of  space  with  time."^  Kant's  assumption  of 
a  permanent  in  time  through  all  change  is  a  complete  miscon- 
ception; "a  permanent  time  is  a  contradiction."^  Moreover,  the 
law  of  causality,  the  principle  of  change,  can  in  no  way  arise  out 
of  the  notion  of  mere  succession  in  time,  as  Kant  endeavors  to 
show  in  the  'Second  Analogy.'  Temporal  succession  need  not 
necessarily  be  causal  succession;  phenomena  may  follow  one 
another  without  following  from  one  another.^  Kant  seems  to 
reverse  Hume's  conclusion  by  tending  to  identify  sequence  with 
consequence;  such  a  view  Schopenhauer  finds  little  better  than 
the  Scholastic  post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc.  In  order  that  mere 
temporal  succession  may  be  transformed  into  causal  connection, 
a  union  of  sequence  in  time  with  permanence  in  space  is  necessary. 
The  causal  law  cannot  be  deduced  from  anything  else ;  it  is  merely 
the  a  priori  certainty  that  we  have  of  necessary  connection  in 
our  perceptual  world,  which  makes  us  ever  seek  the  cause  account- 
ing for  any  perceived  effect. 

It  is  the  perception  of  connected  changes,  viewed  in  the  light 
of  causality,  which  raises  the  question  of  a  permanent  bearer  of 
all  changes;  that  is,  what  Schopenhauer  calls  'causality  objecti- 
fied,'   'matter.'     That  which  in  perceptual  experience  appears 

1  Ibid. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  i88;  M.,  p.  IS4- 

3G..  I,  p.  6oi;  H.K..  II,  p.  78. 

*  Ibid. 

^Cf.  G.,  Ill,  p.  107;  Hillebr.,  p.  106. 


SCOPE  AND  LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  47 

as  a  chain  of  causally  connected  changes,  when  regarded  from 
the  point  of  view  of  its  permanence,  is  what  Schopenhauer  calls 
'matter.'  He  would  not  be  understood  as  upholding  the  old 
doctrine  of  a  hypothetical  Substance  behind  experience;  that  is 
precisely  the  view  which  he  combats.  "Matter  is  never  known 
otherwise  than  as  producing  effects,  i.  e.,  as  through  and  through 
causality;  to  be  and  to  act  are  with  it  one,  which  is  indeed  signi- 
fied by  the  word  actuality.''^  In  the  space-time  union  of  the 
perceptual  order,  'causality'  represents  the  connected  sequence 
of  changing  states,  that  is  to  say,  the  temporal  element; 'matter,' 
the  permanent,  abiding  essence  of  the  changing  properties,  i.  e., 
the  spatial  element.  This  shows  plainly  that  the  conception  of 
the  permanent  is  contributed  by  space,  but  only  in  its  union 
with  time.  "Intimate  union  of  space  and  time — causality, 
matter,  actuality — are  thus  one,  and  the  subjective  correlative 
of  this  one  is  the  understanding."- 

Schopenhauer's  conception  of  matter  has  been  considered  in  this 
connection,  partly  because  it  leads  to  his  view  of  the  groundless 
character  of  the  idea  of  soul  as  immaterial  substance.  He  asks 
the  reader  to  bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  matter  derives  all  its 
real  meaning  from  its  relation  to  the  causal  order.  By  itself, 
therefore,  and  apart  from  its  action  in  causality,  matter  can 
only  be  thought  in  abstracto,  in  conception.  Now,  Schopenhauer 
argues,  from  this  notion  of  matter,  when  thus  abstractly  regarded 
by  itself,  'substance,'  hypothetically  a  higher  genus,  is  abstracted 
by  means  of  retaining  its  one  predicate  of  permanence  and 
ignoring  its  other  essential  attributes,  i.  e.,  extension,  impenetra- 
bility, divisibility,  etc.  Moreover,  "  like  every  higher  geww5  .  .  . 
the  concept  substance  contains  less  in  itself  than  the  concept 
matter,  but,  unlike  every  other  higher  genus,  it  does  not  contain 
more  under  it,  because  it  does  not  include  several  lower  genera 
besides  matter;  but  this  remains  the  one  true  species  of  the 
concept  substance,  the  only  assignable  thing  by  which  its  content 
is  realized  and  receives  a  proof. "^  The  real  motive  for  this 
needless  abstraction,  however,  is  not  far  to  seek.     Just  because 

iG.,  I,  p.  602;  H.K.,  II,  p.  79- 

2  Ibid. 

3G.,  I,  p.  624;  H.K.,  II,  p.  103. 


48  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

the  genus  'substance'  was  framed,  not  by  means  of  a  legitimate 
abstraction  from  several  lower  genera,  but  by  means  of  the 
arbitrary  isolation  of  the  characteristic  of  permanence  of  its  one 
and  only  sub-species,  'matter,'  a  second  species  can  now  be  co- 
ordinated with  'matter'  under  the  concept  'substance,'  i.  e., 
'.'the  immaterial,  simple,  indestructible  substance,  soul."^  The 
arbitrary  and  artificial  character  of  the  whole  procedure  seems 
quite  obvious  to  Schopenhauer.  The  new  species  is  obtained 
by  the  express  denial  of  precisely  those  characteristics  which 
had  been  tacitly  omitted  in  the  'abstraction'  of  the  concept 
'substance'  from  its  one  valid  sub-species,  'matter.'  Thus  the 
notion  of  the  soul  is  shown  to  be  "an  exceedingly  superfluous 
concept,  because  its  only  true  content  lies  already  in  the  concept 
of  matter,  besides  which  it  contains  only  a  great  void,  which  can 
be  filled  up  by  nothing  but  the  illicitly  introduced  species  imma- 
terial substance."^ 

Schopenhauer,  accordingly,  does  not  even  discuss  Kant's 
reasoning  in  the  'Paralogisms  of  Pure  Reason';  he  regards  his 
own  account  of  the  origin  of  the  concept  'soul'  proof  positive 
that  it  cannot  be  employed  legitimately  in  philosophy.  Along 
with  the  notion  of  immaterial  substance,  therefore,  "the  concept 
substance  must  be  entirely  rejected,  and  the  concept  matter 
everywhere  put  in  its  place. "^ 

This,  then,  is  Schopenhauer's  account  of  the  real  significance 
of  'Substance'  in  experience.  And,  while  recent  epistemology 
must  take  exception  to  many  of  the  conclusions  which  Schopen- 
hauer (in  his  more  materialistic  moments,  in  The  Will  in  Nature 
and  in  the  'Supplements'  to  Book  II  of  The  World  as  Will  and 
Idea)  draws  regarding  the  metaphysical  role  of  matter  in  the 
genesis  of  knowledge,  it  must  be  admitted  that  his  general  con- 
ception of  matter,  as  the  permanence  implied  in  the  causal  order, 
is,  on  the  whole,  well  grounded.  It  rightly  emphasizes  the  in- 
separable union  of  space  and  time  in  the  world  of  perception, 
and  insists  upon  the  concreteness  of  causal  connection.  Its 
validity  as  a  basis  for  criticism  of  Kant's  account  of  causality 

1  Ibid. 

2G..  I,  p.  625;  H.K.,  II,  p.  104. 

» Ibid. 


SCOPE   AND   LIMITS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  49 

depends  to  a  large  extent  upon  one's  interpretation  of  Kant's 
real  meaning.  Kant's  endeavor  to  treat  causality  in  terms  of 
objective  succession  may  plausibly  be  interpreted  and  criticised 
as  Schopenhauer  interprets  and  criticises  it;  or,  again,  it  may  be 
viewed  difTerently,  more  in  harmony  with  the  real  spirit  of  the 
Critical  method,  as  a  recognition  of  the  deeper  significance  of 
causality,  by  regarding  it  as  the  typical  expression  of  the  all-per- 
meating coherence  and  objectivity  immanent  in  all  experience. 

Regarding  the  status  of  the  notion  of '  substance '  in  philosophy, 
one  thing  is  certain:  'substance'  is  emphatically  not  admissible 
in  its  old  dogmatic  sense  of  a  transcendent  substratum  existent 
behind  experience.  Such  a  hypostatized  abstraction  is  not  only 
of  no  instrumental  value  for  philosophy,  but  it  makes  impossible 
any  consistent  theory  which  shall  do  justice  to  the  organic  char- 
acter of  experience.  For  the  more  recent  idealistic  epistemology, 
experience  is  one  and  undivided,  and  its  principles  both  of  unity 
and  of  permanence  must  be  in  terms  of  itself;  otherwise  a  dualism 
is  unavoidable,  with  all  its  insoluble  problems  and  hopeless  surds. 
Schopenhauer,  then,  holding  as  he  does  that  'substance'  is  one 
and  immanent  in  concrete  experience,  seems  justified  in  refusing 
even  an  audience  to  the  illegitimate  concept  of  the  immaterial 
soul,  to  which  Kant  devotes  a  whole  chapter  of  his  'Transcendental 
Dialectic' 

Is  Schopenhauer's  own  position,  however,  equally  defensible, 
when  he  identifies  his  one  Substance  with  Matter?  This  identi- 
fication of  Substance  with  the  hypothetically  permanent  in 
physical  causation  involves  a  tendency  towards  a  materialistic 
interpretation  of  experience;  it  means  ignoring  for  the  time  the 
abiding  character  of  the  rational  elements  in  experience.  If  the 
principle  of  permanence  is  to  be  immanent  and  unitary,  experi- 
ence itself  must  be  regarded  as  one  and  undivided.  The  correct 
solution  must  lie  in  the  opposite  direction  from  the  one  Schopen- 
hauer follows.  The  unitary  character  of  substance  can  be  an 
instrumentally  valid  conception  only  for  an  epistemology  which 
recognizes  its  one  Reality  in  the  all-embracing,  coherent,  intel- 
ligible experience,  in  which  every  element  is  a  factor  in  a  self- 
perpetuating  process  of  organization,  and  contributes  to  the 
permanent  significance  of  the  absolute  whole. 


50  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

II.  Rational  Cosmology:  Antinomy  of  Pure  Reason. — The 
idea  of  the  soul  was  technically  deduced  by  Kant  from  the 
categorical  syllogism,  but  only  through  the  most  artificial  manipu- 
lation. In  the  case  of  the  'Antinomy  of  Pure  Reason,'  however, 
Schopenhauer  finds  no  such  violence  necessary,  in  order  to  dis- 
cover the  logical  basis  of  the  "dogmatic  ideas  concerning  the 
universe,  as  far  as  it  is  thought  as  an  object  in  itself,  between  two 
limits — that  of  the  smallest  (atom),  and  that  of  the  largest 
(limits  of  the  universe  in  time  and  space). "^  These  do  really 
proceed  from  the  hypothetical  syllogism.  For,  as  Schopenhauer 
says,  "in  accordance  with  that  principle,  the  mere  dependence 
of  an  object  upon  another  is  ever  sought  for,  till  finally  the 
exhaustion  of  the  imagination  puts  an  end  to  the  journey, "^ 
and  thus  the  real  character  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason 
is  forgotten,  namely,  its  necessary  restriction  to  the  world  of 
representations.  The  'transcendental  ideas'  of  the  hypostatized 
universe,  therefore,  do  actually  find  their  source  in  this  applica- 
tion,— or  rather  misapplication, — of  the  hypothetical  judgment, 
the  logical  form  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason. 

But  "so  much  the  more  is  sophistry  required,"  Schopenhauer 
asserts,  "in  order  to  classify  those  Ideas  according  to  the  four 
titles  of  the  categories."^  Thus  he  sees  no  reason  why  the 
'  Cosmological  Ideas'  concerning  the  limits  of  the  world  in  space 
and  time  shouFd  be  classed  under  'quantity,'  which  denotes 
nothing  more  than  the  extent  of  inclusion  of  the  subject-concept 
in  the  judgment.  Even  less  justified  is  the  arbitrary  linking  of 
the  idea  of  'matter'  to  'quality.'  For  the  notion  of  the  divisi- 
bility of  matter,  Schopenhauer  holds,  not  only  has  nothing  to 
do  with  'quality,'  but  does  not  even  spring  from  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason.  The  relation  of  parts  to  the  whole,  which  is 
the  real  meaning  of  the  second  Cosmological  Idea,  is  based  upon 
the  '  metalogical  principle '  of  contradiction ;  for  "  the  whole  is  not 
through  the  parts,  nor  the  parts  through  the  whole,  but  both 
are  necessarily  together  because  they  are  one,  and  their  separation 
is  only  an  arbitrary  act."^     The  relation  of  parts  to  the  whole  is 

iG.,  I.  p.  625;  H.K.,  II,  p.  104. 
2G.,  I,  p.  625;  H.K..  II.  p.  105. 
3G..  I.  p.  626;  H.K..  II,  p.  105. 
*G.,  I,  pp.  626-627;  H.K.,  II,  p.  106. 


SCOPE   AND   LIMITS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  5  I 

thus  one  of  mutual  implication,  not  one  of  dependence,  of  reason 
and  consequent.  But  Kant  neglects  this  obvious  fact;  "such 
great  difficulties  are  here  overcome  by  the  love  of  symmetry."^ 
The  idea  of  a  First  Cause,  connected  as  it  is  with  the  category  of 
causality,  would  naturally  come  under  the  rubric  of  'relation.' 
But  Kant  assigns  this  to  'modality,'  by  making  use  of  the 
'  totality  of  that  series,'  to  transform  the  contingent,  the  accidental , 
into  the  necessary  ,2  a  procedure  which  perverts  the  whole  meaning 
of '  contingent '  and  '  necessary,'  as  Schopenhauer  uses  these  terms. 
For  Kant's  meaning  becomes  intelligible  only  when,  regarding 
the  hypothetical  series  as  absolutely  complete,  we  are  forced  to 
admit  that  everything  must  be  in  some  way  necessarily  con- 
nected within  the  whole.  But  under  such  arbitrary  conditions 
necessity  and  contingency  alike  become  meaningless,  and  we 
could  with  perfect  right  reverse  Kant's  conclusion  and  say  that 
in  the  'absolute  completeness  of  the  series'  everything  necessary 
becomes  contingent;  and  both  statements  would  be  equally 
meaningless.  For  necessity  and  contingency  are  complementary 
conceptions;  contingency  means  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
the  absence  of  definite  dependence  between  two  particular  states; 
in  a  system  which  is  affirmed  in  the  very  notion  of  necessity.. 
This  is  the  simple  meaning  of  necessity  and  contingency  when- 
applied  to  the  empirical  world,  and  no  absolute  completion  of 
any  series  can  identify  the  two  conceptions. 

Schopenhauer  is  right  in  insisting  upon  the  complementary 
character  of  necessity  and  contingency  as  applied  to  the  world 
of  experience.  Kant  connects  the  Idea  of  First  Cause  and  abso- 
lute necessity  with  modality  by  postulating  the  existence  of  a 
hypostatized  'complete  system,'  which  would  make  the  very 
conception  of  necessity  meaningless.  Necessity  and  contingency 
alike  have  significance  only  for  coherent,  dynamic  experience. 
In  taking  his  stand,  therefore,  on  the  inevitable  distinction  be- 
tween the  necessary  and  the  contingent  in  finite  experience,  and 
in  opposing  Kant's  transcendent  transformation  of  the  contingent 
into  the  necessary,  Schopenhauer  justly  combats  an  untenable 
position. 

iG.,  I,  p.  627;  H.K.,  II,  p.  106. 
2C/".  Kr.  d.  r.  v.,  p.  415;  M.,  p.  335. 


52  SCHOPENHAUER'S    CRITICISM   OF   KANT. 

"About  all  this,  however,"  he  says,  "I  find  and  assert  that 
the  whole  antinomy  is  a  mere  delusion,  a  sham  fight. "^  Only 
the  antitheses  remain  consistently  on  the  objective  basis  of  the 
Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason.  The  theses,  on  the  contrary, 
in  all  four  conflicts,  are  mere  subjective  assertions,  resting  solely 
upon  "the  weakness  of  the  reasoning  individual, "^  or  rather, 
upon  the  indolence  of  his  imagination,  seeking  to  put  an  end  to 
an  endless  regressus.  "The  proof  of  the  thesis  in  all  the  four 
conflicts  is  throughout  a  mere  sophism,  while  that  of  the  antithe- 
sis is  a  necessary  inference  of  the  reason  from  the  laws  of  the  world 
as  idea  known  to  us  a  priori."^  Kant  succeeds  in  maintaining 
the  appearance  of  a  real  conflict  and  a  balanced  antinomy  in 
each  case  by  the  constant  artifice  of  not  showing  clearly  the 
nervus  argumentationis,  but  rather  confusing  and  complicating 
the  argument  by  means  of  "a  mass  of  superfluous  and  prolix 
sentences."^ 

Whether  this  view  of  the  utter  groundlessness  of  the  four  theses, 
and  the  consequent  absence  of  any  real  antinomy,  is  tenable  or 
not,  can  best  be  determined  by  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  line 
of  argument  followed  by  Kant.  "  I  assume,"  Schopenhauer  says, 
"that  in  this  examination  the  reader  has  always  before  him  the 
Kantian  antinomy  itself,"^ — a  suggestion  which  may  also  prove 
helpful  to  the  reader  of  the  present  monograph. 

I.  Antinomy  of  Space  and  Time. — In  the  first  conflict,  Scho- 
penhauer says,  the  thesis,  'The  world  has  a  beginning  in  time 
and  is  limited  with  regard  to  space,'  avoids  the  point  at  issue 
by  a  mere  sophism.  For,  first,  with  regard  to  time,  its  proof 
applies  equally  well  to  a  beginning  in  time  and  to  a  beginning  of 
time,  which  is  absurd.^  Again,  instead  of  arguing  against  the 
impossibility  of  beginning  the  series  of  states  constituting  the 
world,  it  suddenly  turns  its  proof  against  the  conception  of  the 
endlessness  (infinity)  of  the  series;  and  this  it  shows  to  be  in- 
compatible with  the  fixed  completeness  of  the  series,  which  it 

iG..  I.  p.  627;  H.K..  II.  p.  107.     Cf.  Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  430;  M..  p.  346. 

2G.,  I,  p.  627;  H.K.,  II,  p.  107. 

SQ.,  I,  pp.  627-628;  H.K.,  II,  p.  107. 

*G.,  I,  p.  628;  H.K.,  II,  p.  107. 

6G..  I,  p.  628;  H.K.,  II.  p.  108.  iCf.  G.,  IV,  p.  125. 


SCOPE  AND  LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  53 

takes  for  granted.  The  antithesis,  however,  shows  that  an 
absolute  beginning  of  the  world  in  time  presupposes  an  ante- 
cedent empty  time  in  which,  it  is  argued,  no  existence  can  possibly 
have  its  beginning.  And  against  this  proof  of  the  antithesis 
nothing  whatever  is  advanced  by  the  thesis.  An  absolute  end, 
Schopenhauer  asserts,  is  thinkable,  but  not  an  absolute  beginning. 
The  causal  law  "affords  us  a  priori  the  certainty  that  no  occupied 
time  can  ever  be  bounded  by  a  previous  empty  time,  and  that 
no  change  can  be  the  first  change."^  In  assuming  the  complete- 
ness of  the  world  as  a  given  whole,  the  thesis  begs  the  question. 
Thus  it  shows  that  "in  order  ...  to  conceive  the  world,  which 
fills  all  space,  as  a  whole, "^  we  must  consider  it  as  spatially 
limited.  But  the  totality  of  the  world,  in  such  a  sense  of  the 
term  'totality,'  is  just  what  was  to  be  proved;  the  rest  follows 
logically  enough.  "Totality  presupposes  limits,  and  limits  pre- 
suppose totality;  but  here  both  together  are  arbitrarily  pre- 
supposed."^ Inasmuch  as  the  causal  law  applies  to  changes  in 
time  only,  it  cannot  prove  a  priori  the  incompatibility  of  occupied 
and  empty  space.  But  the  mind  cannot  conceive  of  any  possible 
relation  between  the  two.  In  other  words,  in  the  case  of  both 
time  and  space,  the  antithesis  proceeds  on  the  basis  of  the  actual 
world  of  perceptual  experience,  whereas  the  thesis  assumes 
throughout  the  given  'totality'  of  the  world,  which  latter  is  the 
very  point  at  issue. 

2.  Antinomy  of  Matter. — In  a  similar  way,  Schopenhauer  says, 
in  the  second  conflict  "the  thesis  is  at  once  guilty  of  a  very 
palpable  petitio  principii.''*  It  starts  by  assuming  a  compound 
substance,  from  the  compoundness  of  which  it  proves  the  neces- 
sity of  simple  parts  without  any  difficulty.  But,  he  argues,  the 
point  to  be  proved  is  just  this,  that  all  matter  is  compound. 
For  "the  opposite  of  simple  is  not  compound,  but  extended,  that 
which  has  parts  and  is  divisible."^  The  thesis  fails  to  note  that 
the  relation  of  parts  and  whole  is  nowise  temporal,  and  asserts 

1  G.,  I.  p.  630;  H.K.,  II,  p.  109. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V .,  p.  428;  M.,  p.  346. 
3G.,  I,  p.  629;  H.K.,  II,  p.  109. 
<G.,  I,  p.  631;  H.K.,  II,  no. 

6  Ihid. 


54  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

the  existence  of  the  parts  as  in  some  sense  preceding  the  whole; 
for  this  is  the  very  meaning  of  compoundness,  which  asserts  the 
existence  of  the  parts  a  parte  ante.  Hence  the  thesis,  if  it  is  to 
prove  its  case,  must  show  that  there  is  necessarily  a  limit  to  the 
divisibility  of  matter.  Thus,  Schopenhauer  insists,  the  argu- 
ments of  the  thesis  evade  the  problem  and  do  not  even  touch  the 
proofs  of  the  antithesis.  "The  infinite  divisibility  of  matter, 
which  the  antithesis  asserts,  follows  a  priori  and  incontrovertibly 
from  that  of  space,  which  it  fills. "^  Kant  says  in  his  observations 
on  the  thesis:  "we  ought  not  to  call  space  a  compositum,  but  a 
totum."^  This,  Schopenhauer  thinks,  "holds  good  absolutely 
of  matter  also,  which  is  simply  space  become  perceptible."^  This 
is  the  real  force  of  the  antithesis :  its  proof  rests  on  its  realization 
of  the  concrete  character  of  matter.  In  his  effort  to  make  the 
conflict  appear  as  real  as  possible,  Schopenhauer  says,  Kant 
"spoils  the  proof  of  the  antithesis  by  the  greatest  obscurity  of 
style  and  useless  accumulation  of  words,  with  the  cunning  inten- 
tion that  the  evidence  of  the  antithesis  shall  not  throw  the 
sophisms  of  the  thesis  too  much  in  the  shade."'' 

Kant's  'Critical  Solution'  attempts  to  maintain  the  balance  in 
the  antinomies  by  taking  sides  with  neither  thesis  nor  antithesis, 
but,  ostensibly  substituting  for  the  dogmatic  aut-aiit  of  the 
alternatives  in  the  first  two  conflicts  a  nec-nec^  condemning 
both  as  inadequate.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  Schopenhauer 
finds  that  the  verdict  is  "really  the  confirmation  of  the  antitheses 
by  the  explanation  of  their  assertions."^  Thus,  Kant's  view  that 
both  theses  and  antitheses  depend  upon  the  dialectical  argument 
that,  if  the  conditioned  is  given,  the  whole  series  of  conditions 
is  also  given,  is  obviously  erroneous.  This  is  assumed  only  by 
the  thesis,  and  is  exactly  what  the  antithesis  opposes,  starting 
as  it  does  on  the  basis  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason,  which 
is    concerned   only  with  connected  conditioned  and  condition- 

iG..  I.  p.  63i;H.K..  II,  p.  III. 
-^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  438;  M.,  p.  356. 
'G..  I.  p.  631;  H.K.,  II.  p.  III. 
<G.,  I,  pp.  631-632;  H.K.,  II,  p.  HI. 

^Cf.  Paulsen,  Immanuel  Kant,  translated  by  J.  E.  Creighton  and  A.  Lefevre, 
New  York,  1902,  pp.  217  ff. 

«G.,  I,  p.  634;  H.K..  II.  p.  114. 


SCOPE   AND   LIMITS   OF  EXPERIENCE.  5  5 

ing  states,  and  not  with  the  series  of  conditions.  Again,  it  is 
only  the  thesis  that,  in  assuming  a  world  in  space  and  time, 
mistakenly  conceives  space  and  time  as  existent  by  themselves, 
and  makes  "the  false  assumption  of  a  self-existent  universe,  i.  e., 
a  universe  given  prior  to  all  knowledge,  and  to  which  knowledge 
came  as  to  something  external  to  itself."^  Kant's  solution, — 
the  world  is  neither  finite  nor  infinite  in  time  and  space,  because 
time  and  space  have  no  meaning  for  the  world  as  a  whole, — 
does  not  controvert  the  proofs  of  the  antithesis  in  the  least. 
For  the  antithesis  maintains  that  in  the  world  with  which  it 
concerns  itself,  the  spatial-temporal  world  of  knowledge,  no  limits 
of  time  and  space  can  be  postulated;  and  the  conclusion  of 
Kant's  own  solution  follows  directly  from  this:  "The  infinity 
of  the  world  is  only  through  the  regressus,  not  before  it."^  Thus  it 
is  seen  that  the  antithesis  does  not  assert,  as  Kant  claims  that 
it  does,  an  infinity  apart  from  the  progress  of  experience,  but 
merely  refuses  to  admit  that  the  progress  can  at  any  point  come 
to  an  absolute  stop. 

The  same  criticism  applies  to  the  second  conflict.  It  is  the 
thesis  that,  in  asserting  the  compoundness  of  substance  (matter), 
ignores  the  reciprocal  relation  of  parts  and  whole.  The  an- 
tithesis, on  the  other  hand,  in  refusing  to  admit  any  limit  to  the 
divisibility  of  matter,  simply  recognizes  its  concrete  character 
in  the  process  of  experience,  and  is  fully  conscious  of  the  in- 
separableness  of  matter  from  space.  When  Kant  maintains  that 
"none  but  sensuous  conditions  can  enter  into  the  mathematical 
connection  of  the  series  of  phenomena,"^  he  is  but  re-afifirming 
the  contention  of  the  antithesis,  which  is  concerned  throughout 
with  the  world  of  representations.  "  Indeed,"  Schopenhauer  con- 
cludes, "if,  reversing  the  procedure,  we  take  as  the  starting- 
point  what  Kant  gives  as  the  solution  of  the  conflict,  the  assertion 
of  the  antithesis  follows  exactly  from  it."^ 

This  attempt  to  vindicate  the  antitheses  of  the  several  anti- 
nomies is  of  considerable  significance  in  that  it  illustrates  the 

» Ibid. 

^Cf.  G..  I.  p.  635;H.K.,  II,  p.  IIS. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  530;  M.,  p.  430. 
<G..  I.  p.  636;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  115-116. 


56  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

general  character  of  Schopenhauer's  own  philosophical  attitude 
no  less  than  of  his  criticism  of  Kant.  He  seems  correct  in  the 
main  in  his  interpretation  of  the  first  two  Antinomies  and  their 
solution,  i.  e.,  in  claiming  that  the  assertions  of  the  theses  are 
utterly  untenable,  whereas  the  proofs  of  the  antitheses  are  valid 
so  far  as  they  go.  If  taken  in  the  negative  sense  of  merely 
refusing  to  admit  in  the  world  of  representations  laws  other 
than  those  resting  on  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason,  the 
position  represented  by  the  antitheses  is  not  open  to  attack. 
The  vindication  of  the  antitheses  in  the  Antinomies  would  not 
call  for  criticism,  if  it  were  confined  to  the  mere  re-affirmation  of 
the  validity  of  the  mechanical  categories  in  experience  physically 
considered.  But  it  means  more  than  that.  It  means  the  sur- 
render of  the  entire  world  of  possible  experience  to  the  mechanical 
categories;  and  in  this  respect  Kant's  'Critical  Solution'  does 
actually  lead  him  to  the  same  conclusion  that  Schopenhauer 
draws  from  a  thoroughgoing  acceptance  of  the  antitheses.  Space 
and  time  are  indisputably  essential  aspects  of  experience.  The 
objectivity  of  the  causal  process,  which  necessitates  and  is  actual- 
ized in  the  conception  of  matter,  is  fundamental  to  any  intelligible 
view  of  our  world,  and  is  a  ground  of  its  coherence.  But  space, 
time,  and  matter  all  become  meaningless,  if  we  lose  sight  of  the 
all-embracing  character  of  the  experience  of  which  they  are 
aspects.  Space  is  real  for  experience,  but  it  does  not  exhaust 
the  reality  of  experience.  Time  is  indispensable  to  dynamic, 
objective  experience,  but  objectivity  cannot  be  expressed  in  terms 
of  time  alone.  The  spatial-temporal  factors  of  experience  are 
subject  to  laws  which  cannot  be  set  aside  at  pleasure;  but  expe- 
rience is  more  than  merely  spatial-temporal,  and  its  other  aspects 
manifest  uniformities  which  may  require  their  own  special 
principles  of  explanation. 

Experience  is  an  organic  system,  and  no  one  of  its  significant 
aspects  can  be  persistently  ignored  without  wrecking  the  entire 
structure  of  knowledge.  This  does  not  mean  that  all  phases 
of  experience  are  of  equal  'reality,'  from  the  point  of  view  of 
philosophy,  and  that  time,  space,  and  matter  are  no  more  and 
no  less  'real'  than  any  other  aspects  of  experience.     The  degree 


SCOPE  AND  LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  57 

of  reality  of  any  phase  or  factor  of  experience  must  be  determined 
in  terms  of  its  significance  for  the  whole  of  experience  considered 
in  the  light  of  its  immanent  organization.  But  this  point  of 
view  is  only  one  way  of  regarding  the  problem  of  philosophy. 
Here  it  is  merely  insisted  that  space,  time,  and  matter,  funda- 
mental factors  though  they  are  in  the  progressive  organization 
of  experience,  do  not  exhaust  its  significance.  The  antitheses,  as 
Schopenhauer  interprets  them,  refuse  to  admit  the  tenability 
of  any  philosophical  theory  which  treats  space,  time,  and  matter 
in  a  transcendent  way,  out  of  their  interrelation  within  concrete 
experience.  But  precisely  for  that  reason  it  is  philosophically 
inadmissible  to  regard  space,  time,  and  matter  out  of  their  con- 
text by  ignoring  other  aspects  of  experience. 

3.  Antinomies  of  Causality. — The  third  and  fourth  antinomies, 
Schopenhauer  thinks,  differ  only  in  their  external  form ;  at  bottom 
they  both  concern  the  possibility  of  an  unconditioned  First  Cause, 
and  are  thus  essentially  tautological.^ 

The  real  point  at  issue  is  this:  Are  all  changes  in  the  world  of 
phenomena  explainable  only  in  terms  of  causality,  and  therefore 
conditioned  in  nature  according  to  the  Principle  of  Sufficient 
Reason;  or  does  causality  presuppose  the  unconditioned?  The 
thesis  of  the  third  antinomy  Schopenhauer  characterizes  as  "a 
very  fine  sophism. "^  It  starts,  correctly  enough,  by  arguing 
that  a  cause  is  adequate  only  when  it  completely  accounts  for  its 
consequent  effect.  But  then  it  proceeds  to  substitute,  for  the 
completeness  of  the  determining  conditions  present  together  in 
the  production  of  a  concrete  effect,  the  completeness  of  the 
chain  of  causes  of  which  the  state  in  question  presumably  forms 
the  last  link.  And,  inasmuch  as  its  abstract  conception  of  com- 
pleteness involves  the  notion  of  a  closed  system,  and  that,  again, 
implies  finiteness,  "the  argument  infers  from  this  a  first  cause, 
closing  the  series  and  therefore  unconditioned. "^ 

But  "die  Taschenspielerei  liegt  am  Tage,""  as  Schopenhauer 
puts  it.     For  the  causal  law  means  nothing  more  than  this:  that 

>G.,  1.  p.  633:  H.K..  II.  p.  113- 
2G.,  I,  p.  632;  H.K.,  II,  p.  III. 
3G.,  I,  p.  632;  H.K.,  II,  p.  112. 
<  Ibid. 


58  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

for  every  state  B,  in  the  world  of  experience,  an  adequate  ante- 
cedent state  A  must  be  presupposed,  which  conditions  it  neces- 
sarily and  completely.  This  exhausts  the  demand  of  the  causal 
law  in  each  specific  case.  The  question  as  to  how  the  'cause' 
A  itself  came  about  is  irrelevant  to  the  problem  raised  by  the 
consideration  of  state  B;  that  question  can  concern  the  law  of 
causality  only  when  we  turn  to  A,  and,  regarding  it  no  longer 
as  the  conditioning  cause  of  B,  but  as  itself  an  effect,  a  conditioned 
state,  demand  an  explanation  of  it  in  causal  terms.  The  Prin- 
ciple of  Sufficient  Reason  of  'becoming'  proceeds  throughout 
from  the  conditioned  effect  to  the  conditioning  cause.  It  can 
never  be  used  to  trace  chains  of  causes,  because  it  can  never 
start  with  a  cause  as  such. 

The  successive  alternation  of  effects  and  causes  in  the  causal 
series  is  complete  only  in  reference  to  the  process  of  tracing  the 
connection  of  causal  dependence,  and  is  thus  inseparable  from 
the  progress  of  perceptual  knowledge.  Hence  any  theory  of  a 
finite  causal  series  assumes  an  arbitrary  cessation  of  the  law  of 
causality  at  some  one  point,  and  is  due  only  to  "the  laziness  of 
the  speculating  individual."^  This,  Schopenhauer  argues,  is  the 
sum  and  substance  of  the  law  of  causality,  and  it  expresses  the 
real  argument  of  the  antitheses,  in  spite  of  the  confused  language 
in  which  the  latter  are  couched.  Schopenhauer  insists  through- 
out that  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason  in  general  and  the  law 
of  causality  in  particular  apply  only  to  concrete  dependence  in 
the  world  of  phenomena,  and  distinctly  not  to  the  universe  taken 
as  a  hypostatized  whole.  The  assumptions  of  "a  primary  begin- 
ning, "^  "absolute  spontaneity  of  causes,"^  "necessity  of  a  first 
beginning  of  a  series  of  phenomena  from  freedom  ...  so  far 
only  as  it  is  necessary  in  order  to  comprehend  an  origin  of  the 
world, "^  are  all  incompatible  with  the  fundamental  meaning  of 
the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason. 

In  his  'Critical  Solution'  of  the  two  antinomies  of  causality, 
Kant  attempts  to  show  the  partial  truth  of  both  thesis  and 

iG.,  I,  p.  633;  H.K.,  II.  p.  112. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  446;  M.,  p.  362. 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  446;  M.,  p.  364. 

*Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  448;  M.,  p.  366. 


SCOPE  AND   LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  59 

antithesis;  but  his  attempt  is  necessarily  futile.  The  arguments 
of  thesis  and  antithesis  alike  concern,  not  any  transcendent 
world  of  things-in-themselves,  but  only  the  phenomenal,  the 
objective  World  as  Idea.  The  whole  force  of  the  thesis  is  directed 
to  prove  that  the  phenomenal  world  itself  involves  unconditioned 
causes,  and  this  is  precisely  what  the  antithesis  denies.  This  is 
explicitly  stated  in  the  fourth  conflict:  the  thesis  demands  some- 
thing absolutely  necessary,  which  nevertheless  "belongs  itself 
to  the  world  of  sense, "^  and  is  "contained  in  the  world. "^  The 
causality  of  freedom,  the  validity  of  which  the  thesis  seeks  to 
prove  in  the  third  antinomy,  is  no  transcendent  matter,  but  is 
merely  the  spontaneous  originating  of  a  series,  which  thence- 
forward is  to  operate  "according  to  mere  laws  of  nature."^  And 
it  is  precisely  against  this  doctrine  of  the  arbitrary  violability  of 
the  causal  law  in  the  empirical  world  that  the  antithesis  directs 
its  proofs,  depending  as  it  does  throughout  upon  the  explicitly 
phenomenal  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason. 

Kant's  theory  of  freedom,  therefore,  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  the 
thing-in-itself,  is  entirely  irrelevant  in  this  connection.  For  the 
relation  of  the  intelligible  to  the  empirical  character,  Schopen- 
hauer insists,  is  nowise  a  causal  relation,  but  passes  beyond  the 
phenomenal  world  and  raises  the  fundamental  metaphysical 
problem  of  the  thing-in-itself.  In  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  present 
issue,  however,  that  theory  also  affirms  the  argument  of  the 
antithesis.  For,  in  Kant's  'Critical  Solution,'  it  is  argued  that 
in  the  phenomenal  world  causality  is  supreme;  the  empirical  char- 
acter of  man  is  unalterably  determined.  Hence  man  can  by 
no  means  originate  a  causal  series  in  the  world  of  nature.  Free- 
dom is  the  principle  of  explanation  of  the  world  itself,  which  (for 
Schopenhauer)  is  in  itself  a  manifestation  of  Will.  But  in  the 
world, — and  this  is  the  point  at  issue  here, — "w  the  world  causal- 
ity is  the  sole  principle  of  explanation,  and  everything  happens 
simply  according  to  the  laws  of  nature."*  Thus,  Schopenhauer 
concludes,  "the  right  lies  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  antithesis, 

^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  452;  M.,  p.  370. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V.,  p.  454;  M.,  p.  372. 
^Kr.  d.  r.  V .,  p.  448;  M.,  p.  366. 
*G.,  I,  p.  644;  H.K.,  II.  p.  124. 


60  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF   KANT. 

which  sticks  to  the  question  in  hand,  and  uses  the  principle  of 
explanation  which  is  valid  with  regard  to  it;  therefore  it  needs 
no  apology.  The  thesis,  on  the  other  hand,  is  supposed  to  be 
got  out  of  the  matter  by  an  apology,  which  first  passes  over  to 
something  quite  different  from  the  point  at  issue,  and  then  as- 
sumes a  principle  of  explanation  which  is  inapplicable  to  it."^ 

III.  Transcendental  Ideal:  God. — Schopenhauer  is  quite  curt  in 
dismissing  the  arguments  of  speculative  theology.  He  thinks 
that  Kant  makes  too  long  work  of  his  refutation  of  the  theological 
proofs.  "No  critique  of  reason  was  necessary  for  the  refutation 
of  the  ontological  proof  of  the  existence  of  God;  for  without 
presupposing  the  aesthetic  and  analytic,  it  is  quite  easy  to  make 
clear  that  that  ontological  proof  is  nothing  but  a  subtle  playing 
with  conceptions  which  is  quite  powerless  to  produce  conviction. "^ 
It  should  be  recognized  for  what  it  is,  a  veritable  masterpiece 
of  the  monstrous  productions  of  scholastic  theology.^  This  sum- 
mary manner  of  dealing  with  the  ontological  argument  exemplifies 
Schopenhauer's  general  attitude  towards  Kant's  chapter  on  "The 
Ideal  of  Pure  Reason."  He  dismisses  the  two  other  scholastic 
proofs  without  much  ado :  the  cosmological  proof,  as  incompatible 
with  the  law  of  causality;  the  physico-theological  proof,  as  com- 
pletely misconceiving  the  meaning  of  teleology  in  experience. 
Philosophy  and  theism,  Schopenhauer  holds,  are  fundamentally 
opposed  to  each  other,  and  the  conception  of  God  is  out  of  place 
in  any  consistent  epistemology.^  The  real  basis  for  the  notion  of 
an  Ultimate  is  to  be  sought  for,  not  in  terms  of  transcendent,  but 
of  immanent  teleology. 

The  indubitable  significance  of  the  teleological  categories  leads 
Kant  to  the  assumption  of  a  transcendent  world  of  Reason,  and 
the  conception  of  things-in-themselves  inevitably  introduces  a 
line  of  cleavage  between  the  theoretical  and  the  practical,  which 
makes  consistent  unity  impossible  in  the  technical  formulation 
of  Kant's  theory  of  reality.     The  world  of  freedom  remains  for 

I  Ibid. 

2G.,  I,  pp.  648-649;  H.K.,  II,  p.  129. 

'G.,  I.  p.  646;  H.K.,  II.  p.  127. 

*Cf.  G.,  IV,  pp.  128  ff.,  where  Schopenhauer  discusses  further  the  three  proofs 
of  speculative  theology,  in  connection  with  some  remarks  bearing  more  directly 
upon  his  views  on  the  philosophy  of  religion. 


SCOPE  AND   LIMITS  OF  EXPERIENCE.  6 1 

him  an  'as  if,'  a  necessary  postulate  of  Practical  Reason;  it  never 
acquires  epistemological  validity  for  the  world  of  possible  expe- 
rience. Schopenhauer's  solution  of  this  problem,  on  the  other 
hand,  points  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  world  of  Will  and 
freedom  is  for  him  the  absolute  reality  which  underlies  the  world 
of  cognitive  experience;  Kant's  'world  of  possible  experience' 
is  therefore  regarded,  from  the  point  of  view  of  metaphysics,  as 
lacking  in  ultimate  validity  and  truth,  as  an  appearance,  an 
illusion,  as  the  veil  of  Maya  concealing  the  free  Will-Reality. 

In  spite  of  essential  differences  in  standpoint,  which  have  been 
at  least  sufficiently  accentuated  in  the  above  comparison  of  their 
treatment  of  the  teleological  principles,  Kant  and  Schopenhauer 
make  the  same  fundamental  mistake.  Neither  fully  realized 
the  essentially  instrumental  character  of  all  categories.  Each 
and  every  category  considers  experience,  all  of  it,  from  its  own 
point  of  view.  Experience  is  one,  and  the  categories  are  its 
categories,  the  points  of  view  from  which  it  may  profitably  be 
regarded ;  no  one  of  them  can  exhaust  its  meaning,  nor  can  any 
truly  significant  category  find  its  own  meaning  exhausted  in 
any  one  part  of  experience,  for  the  simple  reason  that  experience 
is  organic  and  is  therefore  not  divisible  into  discrete  parts. 

Schopenhauer's  failure  to  draw  this  inevitable  conclusion  from 
the  results  of  the  Transcendental  Dialectic,  and  the  consequent 
dualism  of  his  own  metaphysics,  will  be  considered  in  the  next 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Experience  and  Reality:  The  Will  as  the  Thing-in-Itself. 

The  Critical  epistemology  leads  inevitably  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  possible  experience  is  phenomenal,  i.  e.,  that  it  has  no 
meaning  except  in  terms  of  knowledge  and  in  reference  to  the 
knowing  subject.  This  realization  of  the  fundamentally  sub- 
jective character  of  the  phenonemal  'object,'  Schopenhauer 
regards  as  "the  theme  of  the  'Critique  of  Pure  Reason.'  "^ 
The  organization  of  this  subject-object  world  of  possible  ex- 
perience is  formulated  by  Kant  in  terms  of  the  mechanical 
categories,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  teleological.  This  is  the 
formal  result  of  the  'Dialectic' 

The  rejection  of  the  rationalistic  solution  of  the  teleological 
problem  does  not,  however,  do  away  with  the  problem  itself. 
The  'practical'  can  have  no  real  application  in  an  experience 
conceived  in  purely  mechanical  terms;  nevertheless,  Kant  is 
deeply  impressed  with  the  undeniable  significance  of  the  moral 
and  aesthetic  phases  of  experience,  and  with  the  inadequacy  of 
the  mechanical  categories  to  explain  these.  His  vindication 
of  the  real  significance  of  the  teleological  categories  is  intimately 
connected  with  his  justification  of  the  notion  of  the  thing-in- 
itself.  A  change  of  philosophical  method  is  to  be  observed  at 
this  stage  of  Kant's  exposition,  which  Schopenhauer  interprets 
as  follows.  Kant  does  not  affirm,  clearly  and  distinctly,  the 
absolute  mutual  dependence  of  subject  and  object  in  all  possible 
experience.  "He  does  not  say,  as  truth  required,  simply  and 
absolutely  that  the  object  is  conditioned  by  the  subject,  and 
conversely,  but  only  that  the  manner  of  appearance  of  the  object 
is  conditioned  by  the  forms  of  knowledge  of  the  subject,  which^ 
therefore,  come  a  priori  to  consciousness.  But  that  now  which 
in  opposition  to  this  is  only  known  a  posteriori  is  for  him  the 
immediate  effect  of  the  thing  in  itself,  which  becomes  phenom- 

iG.,  II,  p.  205;  H.K.,  II,  p.  381. 

62 


EXPERIENCE  AND   REALITY.  63 

enon  only  in  its  passage  through  these  forms  which  are  given 
a  priori/'^  And  Kant  fails  to  realize  that  "objectivity  in  gen- 
eral belongs  to  the  forms  of  the  phenomenon,  and  is  just  as  much 
conditioned  by  subjectivity  in  general  as  the  mode  of  appearing 
of  the  object  is  conditioned  by  the  forms  of  knowledge  of  the 
subject;  that  thus  if  a  thing  in  itself  must  be  assumed,  it  abso- 
lutely cannot  be  an  object,  which  however  he  always  assumes 
it  to  be,  but  such  a  thing  in  itself  must  necessarily  lie  in  a  sphere 
toto  genere  different  from  the  idea  (from  knowing  and  being 
known).  "2 

Schopenhauer  criticises  Kant's  conception  of  the  thing-in- 
itself  in  the  same  manner  in  which  he  had  criticised  his  theory  of 
the  a  priori  character  of  the  causal  law.  ' '  Both  doctrines  are  true, 
but  their  proof  is  false.  "^  Kant  argues  that  "the  phenomenon, 
thus  the  visible  world,  must  have  a  reason,  an  intelligible  cause, 
which  is  not  a  phenomenon,  and  therefore  belongs  to  no  possible 
experience."^  But  this  is  perverting  entirely  the  meaning  of  the 
law  of  causality,  which  applies  exclusively  to  relations  between 
phenomenal  changes,  and  can  therefore  in  no  way  account  for  the 
phenomenal  world  as  a  hypostatized  entity.  This  "incredible 
inconsistency  "^  was  early  discerned  by  Kant's  critics,  especially 
by  G.  E.  Schulze.®  Schopenhauer  explains  it  as  due  to  Kant's  irre- 
sistible desire  to  establish  in  some  way  the  reality  of  the  practical 
postulates,  God,  freedom,  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  which 
he  found  himself  unable  to  establish  upon  the  speculative  basis 
of  rationalism.  Making  use  of  the  distinction  between  theoreti- 
cal and  practical  reason,  he  now  transports  the  machinery  of 
rational  dogmatism  into  the  practical  sphere,  and  thus  justifies 
the  practical  validity  of  the  Ideas  of  God,  Freedom,  and  Immor- 
tality in  the  world  of  possible  experience,  by  maintaining  their 
metaphysical  validity  in  the  supersensible  world  of  things- 
in-themselves. 

Kant's  technical  view  of  this  problem,  and  his  entire  method 

'G.,  I.  pp.  638-639;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  118-119. 
2G.,  I,  p.  639;  H.K.,  II,  p.  119-  ^Ibid. 

'G.,  I,  p.  638;  H.K.,  II,  pp.  117-118. 
sQ.,  I,  p.  638;  H.K.,  II.  p.  1:8. 
«C/.  G..  IV,  pp.  iioff. 


64  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

of  dealing  with  it,  in  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,  Schopen- 
hauer regards  as  fundamentally  false.  His  own  Basis  of  Moral- 
ity contains  a  vigorous  attack  upon  the  fundamental  principles 
of  Kant's  ethical  theory.  According  to  him,  Kant  "founds  .  .  . 
his  moral  principle  not  on  any  provable  fact  of  consciousness, 
such  as  an  inner  natural  disposition,  nor  yet  upon  any  objective 
relation  of  things  in  the  external  world,  .  .  .  but  on  pure 
Reason,  which  ...  is  taken,  not  as  it  really  and  exclusively 
is, — an  intellectual  faculty  of  man, — hut  as  a  self-existent  hypo- 
static essence,  yet  without  the  smallest  authority."^  The  second 
Critique  inconsistently  retains  what  was  declared  untenable 
in  the  'Transcendental  Dialectic',  by  the  obvious  subterfuge  of 
raising  the  speculative  reason  into  a  genus,  and  then  deducing 
from  it  a  second  species,  practical  reason, — a  procedure  similar 
to  that  accounting  for  the  origin  of  immaterial  substance,  and 
as  inconsistent  as  it  is  useless  in  the  solution  of  the  ethical 
problem.^  Through  the  road  of  knowledge,  through  understand- 
ing and  reason,  we  can  arrive  at  perception  and  conception 
respectively;  but  cognition  is  always  restricted  to  phenomena, 
the  thing-in-itself  is  xxnknowahXe.  The  Critical  account  of 
experience  as  phenomenal  in  character,  and  its  definition  of 
'phenomenal'  as  synonymous  with  cognitive  experience,  made 
possible  through  the  mechanical  categories,  show  that  the  thing- 
in-itself,  the  kernel  of  experience,  is  forever  beyond  the  reach 
of  knowledge. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Schopenhauer  makes  what  he  regards 
as  his  own  great  contribution  to  philosophical  thought;  here 
it  is  that  Schopenhauer's  philosophy  joins  onto  the  Kantian, 
or  rather  springs  from  it  as  from  its  parent  stem.^  "Upon 
the  path  of  the  idea  one  can  never  get  beyond  the  idea;  it  is 
a  rounded-oflf  whole,  and  has  in  its  own  resources  no  clue  leading 
to  the  nature  of  the  thing  in  itself,  which  is  toto  genere  difTerent 

•G.,  Ill,  pp.  510,  511;  Basis  of  Morality,  tr.  by  A.  B.  Bullock,  London,  1903. 
pp.  44,  45.  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  problem,  cf.  the  writer's  article  on 
"Schopenhauer's  Criticism  of  Kant's  Theory  of  Ethics,"  The  Philosophical 
Review,  Vol.  XIX,  No.  5,  Sept.,  1910,  pp.  512-534- 

2G..  Ill,  pp.  SI  I  ff.;  Bullock,  pp.  45  ff. 

'C/.  R.  Behm,  Vergleichung  der  kantischen  und  schopenhauerischen  Lehre  in 
Ansehung  der  Kausalitdt,  Heidelberg,   1892,  p.  39. 


EXPERIENCE   AND   REALITY.  65 

from  it.  If  we  were  merely  perceiving  beings,  the  way  to  the 
thing  in  itself  would  be  absolutely  cut  off  from  us.  Only  the 
other  side  of  our  own  being  can  disclose  to  us  the  other  side  of 
the  inner  being  of  things.  This  path  I  have  followed."^  Kant 
is  correct  in  holding  that  we  are  unable  to  arrive  at  the  ultimate 
reality  of  things  by  the  road  of  knowledge;  but  he  then  pro- 
ceeds to  deny  the  possibility  of  all  metaphysics,  thus  ignoring, 
in  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  the  paramount  ontological  sig- 
nificance of  non-cognitive  experience. 

Nevertheless,  Kant's  theory  of  freedom,  untenable  though 
it  is  in  its  technical  form,  serves  to  indicate  his  realization  of  the 
inadequate  and  incomplete  character  of  his  epistemology  and  its 
implications.  The  doctrine  of  the  transcendental  freedom  of 
man's  will  recognizes  implicitly,  Schopenhauer  maintains,  that 
in  man  necessity  is  phenomenal  only,  and  that  in  him  the  thing- 
in-itself  manifests  its  inner  nature  in  the  form  of  Will.  "What, 
then,  Kant  teaches  of  the  phenomenon  of  man  and  his  action 
my  teaching  extends  to  all  phenomena  in  nature,  in  that  it  makes 
the  will  as  a  thing-in-itself  their  foundation.  "^  For  man  is  not 
toto  genere  different  from  the  rest  of  experience,  but  differs  only 
in  degree.  The  World  as  Idea  is,  as  Kant  says,  purely  phenom- 
enal; but  it  does  not  exhaust  reality.  "As  the  world  is  in  one 
aspect  entirely  idea,  so  in  another  it  is  entirely  will.  A  reality 
which  is  neither  of  these  two,  but  an  object  in  itself  (into  which 
the  thing  in  itself  has  unfortunately  dwindled  in  the  hands  of 
Kant),  is  the  phantom  of  a  dream,  and  its  acceptance  is  an  ignis 
fatuus  in  philosophy."^  The  path  of  objective  knowledge  does 
not  lead  us  to  the  real  nature  of  things,  and  so  far  Schopenhauer 
is  in  thorough  agreement  with  Kant.  But  "the  thing  in  itself  can, 
as  such,  only  come  into  consciousness  quite  directly,  in  this  way, 
that  it  is  itself  conscious  of  itself;  to  wish  to  know  it  objectively 
is  to  desire  something  contradictory."*  The  thing-in-itself 
is  unknowable,  precisely  because  it  is  not  a  matter  of  knowledge 
but  is  in  its  inmost  essence  Will.     Our  consciousness  of  willing 

iG.,  I.  p.  638;  H.K.,  II.  p.  118.     Cf.  G.,  IV,  p.  lis- 
2G..  II,  pp.  201-202;  H.K.,  II,  p.  377. 
'G.,  I,  p.  3S;  H.K..  I,  p.  s- 
*G.,  II,  p.  227;  H.K..  II,  p.  405- 


66  SCHOPENHAUER'S  CRITICISM   OF    KANT. 

is  the  only  'knowledge'  which  we  can  have  of  the  thing-in-itself. 
But  by  'will'  Schopenhauer  does  not  mean  " merely  willing  and 
purposing  in  the  narrowest  sense,  but  also  all  striving,  wishing, 
shunning,  hoping,  fearing,  loving,  hating,  in  short,  all  that 
directly  constitutes  our  own  weal  and  woe,  desire  and  aversion.  "^ 

Kant,  then,  recognized  the  metaphysical  significance  of  human 
volition,  but  his  perverse  explanation  of  it  in  terms  of  Practical 
Reason  led  him  to  regard  volition  as  a  special  prerogative  of 
man.  Schopenhauer  considers  it  his  own  great  achievement  in 
philosophy  to  have  completed  Kant's  idealism  by  indicating  the 
ultimate  character  of  the  Will  as  the  Weltprincip,  as  the  one 
and  only  thing-in-itself.  For  this  is  the  greatest  truth  in  all 
philosophy:  the  nature  of  man  manifests  the  character  of  ulti- 
mate reality .2  "We  must  learn  to  understand  nature  from  our- 
selves, not  conversely  ourselves  from  nature."^  Man  is  not  the 
microcosm;  nature  is,  rather,  the  macanthropos.  This  is  the 
point  of  view  from  which  Schopenhauer  now  proceeds  to  re- 
interpret the  entire  universe  of  phenomena,  which,  in  his  theory 
of  knowledge,  he  had  characterized  as  mere  spatial-temporal 
ideas,  necessarily  determined  by  the  Principle  of  Sufficient 
Reason  in  the  subject-object  world. 

The  consciousness  of  willing  and  striving,  in  which  the  thing- 
in-itself  reveals  itself  in  man,  is  different  from  the  striving  and 
willing  manifest  in  all  nature,  but  different  only  in  degree. 
"Even  the  lowest  forces  of  nature  themselves  are  animated 
by  that  same  will,  which  afterwards,  in  the  individual  beings 
provided  with  intelligence,  marvels  at  its  own  work,  as  the 
somnambulist  wonders  in  the  morning  at  what  he  has  done  in  his 
sleep;  or  more  accurately,  which  is  astonished  at  its  own  form 
which  it  beholds  in  the  mirror."^  There  is  in  all  things  a  meta- 
physical element,  ultimate  and  refusing  further  analysis,  which 
remains  after  their  existence  as  ideas  of  the  subject  has  been 
set  aside.^     What  this  metaphysical  kernel  is,  Kant  is  unable  to 

>G.,  11,  p.  233;  H.K.,  II,  p.  412. 
2C/.  G.,  I,  p.  164;  H.K..  I,  p.  143- 
3G.,  II.  p.  227;  H.K.,  II,  p.  406. 
*G.,  II,  p.  381;  H.K.,  III,  p.  73- 
»G.,  I,  p.  157;  H.K.,  I,  p.  136. 


EXPERIENCE  AND  REALITY.  6/ 

say;  but  he  is  right,  Schopenhauer  thinks,  in  stating  what  it  is 
not.  In  excluding  space,  time,  causaHty,  and  all  the  categories 
of  knowledge  from  it,  Kant  asserts  its  non-cognitive  character 
and  is  dimly  conscious  of  the  truth  to  which  Schopenhauer  him- 
self first  gives  adequate  expression.  Science  investigates  phe- 
nomena, generalizes,  systematizes  our  knowledge.  But  all 
science  whatever  finally  ends  in  some  surd  or  other  which  it  is 
unable  to  solve  on  the  basis  of  its  own  premises.  "This  that 
witholds  itself  from  investigation  ...  is  the  thing-in-itself,  is 
that  which  is  essentially  not  idea,  not  object  of  knowledge,  but 
has  only  become  knowable  by  entering  that  form.  The  form  is 
originally  foreign  to  it,  and  the  thing-in-itself  can  never  become 
entirely  one  with  it,  can  never  be  referred  to  mere  form,  and, 
since  this  form  is  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason,  can  never  be 
completely  explained."^  It  is  not  capable  of  any  abstract  formu- 
lation; its  non-cognitive,  dynamic  character  is  its  essential  char- 
acteristic. The  thing-in-itself,  which  reveals  itself  in  man  as 
conscious  willing,  is  manifest  in  the  action  of  all  things,  assuming 
an  infinity  of  forms,  but  remaining  throughout  the  series  a  rest- 
less, endless  striving,  a  conative  flux. 

In  the  higher  grades  of  the  manifestation  of  the  will,  indi- 
viduality comes  to  occupy  a  prominent  position  f  but  we  should 
err  if  we  mistook  the  absence  of  self-conscious  individuality  for 
absence  of  the  will-reality.  "If  ...  I  say,"  Schopenhauer 
writes,  "the  force  which  attracts  a  stone  to  the  earth  is  according 
to  its  nature,  in  itself,  and  apart  from  all  idea,  will,  I  shall  not 
be  supposed  to  express  in  this  proposition  the  insane  opinion 
that  the  stone  moves  itself  in  accordance  with  a  known  motive, 
merely  because  this  is  the  way  in  which  will  appears  in  man."^ 
That  is  to  say,  to  quote  a  significant  passage:  "When  in  any 
phenomenon  a  knowing  consciousness  is  added  to  that  inner  being 
which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  all  phenomena,  a  consciousness 
which  when  directed  inwardly  becomes  self -consciousness,  then 
that  inner  being  presents  itself  to  this  self-consciousness  as  that 
which  is  so  familiar  and  so  mysterious,  and  is  denoted  by  the 

iG.,  I,  pp.  176-177;  H.K.,  I,  p.  157- 
2G.,  I,  p.  188;  H.K.,  I,  p.  170. 
3G.,  I,  p.  IS8;H.K.,  I.p.  137- 


68  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

word  will.  Accordingly  we  have  called  that  universal  funda- 
mental nature  of  all  phenomena  the  will,  after  that  manifestation 
in  which  it  unveils  itself  to  us  most  fully. ""^ 

Comparing  the  intellectual  and  the  conative  aspects  of  expe- 
rience, therefore,  Schopenhauer  emphasizes  the  direct  immediacy 
of  the  latter,  as  over  against  the  merely  presentative  character 
of  the  former.  The  world  of  perception  is  directly  apprehended 
by  the  knowing  subject,  through  the  faculty  of  the  understanding 
and  its  one  category  of  cause-eflfect,  resulting  from  the  union 
of  space  and  time.  Its  cognitive  directness  is  in  marked  contrast 
to  the  abstract  character  of  conception,  with  its  multitude  of 
artificial  abstractions  and  formal  laws,  lacking  all  application  to 
direct  experience.  But  perception  and  conception  alike,  Scho- 
penhauer holds,  lack  the  immediacy  of  the  conative  experience. 
In  the  willing  consciousness  the  entire  intellectual  web  of  the 
World  as  Idea  is  swept  aside;  the  multiplicity  of  things  in  space 
and  time,  which  hides  the  metaphysical  oneness  of  all  reality 
from  the  knowing  subject,  is  no  more;  the  one  ultimate  condition 
of  the  possibility  of  consciousness  alone  remains, — time.  This 
the  consciousness  of  man  cannot  efface  without  effacing  itself. 

"The  will,  as  that  which  is  metaphysical,  is  everywhere  the 
boundary-stone  of  every  investigation,  beyond  which  it  cannot 
go. "2  No  "systematically  connected  insight"^  into  this  meta- 
physical unity  of  Will  is  possible;  the  inevitably  temporal  char- 
acter of  our  consciousness  makes  us  unable  to  grasp  the  thing- 
in-itself  once  for  all  in  its  inmost  nature.  But,  Schopenhauer 
frankly  admits,  "the  question  may  still  be  raised,  what  that  will, 
which  exhibits  itself  in  the  world  and  as  the  world,  ultimately 
and  absolutely  is  in  itself?  i.  e.,  what  it  is,  regarded  altogether 
apart  from  the  fact  that  it  exhibits  itself  as  will,  or  in  general 
appears,  i.  e.,  in  general  is  known.  This  question  can  never  be 
answered:  because,  as  we  have  said,  becoming  known  is  itself 
the  contradictory  of  being  in  itself,  and  everything  that  is  known 
is  as  such  only  phenomenal.  But  the  possibility  of  this  question 
shows  that  the  thing  in  itself,  which  we  know  most  directly  in 

'G.,  II.  pp.  373-374;  H.K..  Ill,  pp.  65-66. 
2G.,  II,  p.  421;  H.K.,  III,  p.  116. 
3G..  II,  p.  379;  H.K..  III.  p.  71. 


EXPERIENCE   AND   REALITY.  69 

the  will,  may  have,  entirely  outside  all  possible  phenomenal 
appearance,  ways  of  existing,  determinations,  qualities,  which 
are  absolutely  unknowable  and  incomprehensible  to  us."^ 

Thus,  ultimately,  in  its  own  inmost  being,  the  thing-in-itself 
is  for  Schopenhauer  also  unknowable.  We  never  can  penetrate 
in  consciousness  through  the  last,  thinnest  of  veils,  time,  and  be 
the  thing-in-itself;  nevertheless,  Schopenhauer  warns  us  against 
considering  will  as  a  mere  example  or  analogue  of  the  thing-in- 
itself.  Bradley's  way  of  regarding  the  matter  is  quite  different: 
"Thought  .  .  .  must  have  been  absorbed  into  a  fuller  experience. 
Now  such  an  experience  may  be  called  thought,  if  you  choose  to 
use  that  word.  But  if  any  one  else  prefers  another  term,  such 
as  feeling  or  will,  he  would  be  equally  justified."-  Schopenhauer 
would  not  have  consented  to  any  such  generous  policy.  'Will,' 
used  in  the  metaphysical  sense,  refers  not  only  to  the  funda- 
mentally conative  character  of  all  animal  beings,  but  also  to 
"the  force  which  germinates  and  vegetates  in  the  plant,  and 
indeed  the  force  through  which  the  crystal  is  formed,  that  by 
which  the  magnet  turns  to  the  north  pole,  .  .  .  the  force  which 
appears  in  the  elective  affinities  of  matter  as  repulsion  and  attrac- 
tion, decomposition  and  combination,  and,  lastly,  even  gravita- 
tion. .  .  ."3  Thus  it  would  be  a  misunderstanding  of  Schopen- 
hauer's theory,  to  interpret  his  thing-in-itself  as  will  in  the  narrow? 
sense  of  motived  volition.  But,  Schopenhauer  insists,  "I  should 
be  equally  misunderstood  by  any  one  who  should  think  that  it 
is  all  the  same  in  the  end  whether  we  denote  this  inner  nature 
of  all  phenomena  by  the  word  will  or  by  any  other. "^  For  this 
would  be  the  case  only  if  the  thing-in-itself  were  indirectly  known, 
if  'Will'  were  its  mere  symbol.  "But,"  as  he  says,  "the  word 
will,  which,  like  a  magic  spell,  discloses  to  us  the  inmost  being  of 
everything  in  nature,  is  by  no  means  an  unknown  quantity, 
something  arrived  at  only  by  inference,  but  is  fully  and  imme- 
diately comprehended,  and  is  so  familiar  to  us  that  we  know  and 
understand  what  will  is  far  better  than  anything  else."^ 

•G.,  II,  pp.  229-230;  H.K.,  II,  p.  408. 

"^Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  London,  1897,  p.  171. 

3G.,  I,  p.  163;  H.K.,  I,  p.  142. 

^G.,  I,  p.  164;  H.K.,  I,  p.  144- 

'G.,  I,  p.  165;  H.K.,  I,  p.  144- 


70  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

The  willing  consciousness,  therefore,  affords  us  the  first  direct 
hint  as  to  what  the  inner  nature  of  reality  may  be.  When, 
having  thus  realized  our  own  inner  nature,  we  look  again  at 
the  world  and  recognize  that  "every  kind  of  active  and  operating 
force  in  nature  is  essentially  identical  with  will,"^  that  the  cona- 
tive  is  in  all  experience  the  most  immediate,  the  prior,  the  ulti- 
mately unanalyzable  because  subject  to  no  abstract  laws,  then 
the  word  'will'  acquires  a  new  meaning.  Then  the  real  sig- 
nificance of  the  world  first  dawns  upon  us,  and  the  metaphysical 
character  of  the  ethical  aspect  of  experience  becomes  evident. 
Then  only,  as  Schopenhauer  says,  do  we  understand  the  meaning 
of  the  Kantian  doctrine  that  time,  space,  and  causality  do  not 
belong  to  the  thing-in-itself,  but  are  only  forms  of  knowledge. ^ 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  only  when  the  solution  of  the  meta- 
physical problem  has  disclosed  to  us  the  essential  nature  of 
the  thing-in-itself  as  Will,  does  Kant's  inconsistently  formu- 
lated doctrine  of  the  primacy  of  Practical  Reason  acquire  a  real 
meaning  for  philosophy.  On  Kant's  basis  metaphysics  is  im- 
possible and  the  thing-in-itself  unknowable.  Schopenhauer  pro- 
poses his  theory  of  Will  as  offering  an  immanent  solution  of 
the  problem  of  metaphysics:  it  repudiates  the  untenable  logic 
of  Kant's  transcendent  explanations,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
consistently  reveals  the  true  significance  of  Kant's  doctrine  of 
Practical  Reason,  thus  supplementing  and  bringing  to  completion 
the  Idealistic  philosophy.  This  is  Schopenhauer's  estimate  of 
his  own  philosophical  achievement. 

In  his  criticism  of  Kant's  '  Transcendental  Dialectic,'  Schopen- 
hauer advocates  a  position  which,  up  to  a  certain  point,  is  in 
marked  agreement  with  recent  epistemology  and  its  interpreta- 
tion of  science  and  scientific  methods.  Schopenhauer  constantly 
insists  that  in  the  World  as  Idea  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason 
is  the  sole  principle  of  explanation.  The  causally  connected 
universe  discloses  the  operation  of  immutable  laws,  to  ignore 
which,  even  in  a  slight  degree,  would  make  any  real  progress 
in  science  impossible.  To  offer  an  answer  in  terms  of  'freedom,' 
when  a  scientific  answer  in  causal  terms  is  demanded,  is  to  shirk 

iG.,  I,  p.  164;  HK.,  I,  p.  143- 

'G.,  I,  pp.  166-167;  H.K.,  I,  p.  146. 


EXPERIENCE   AND   REALITY.  7^ 

the  point  at  issue.  If  science  is  to  remain  science,  it  must  rest 
all  its  conclusions  upon  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason.  But, 
for  Kant,  the  distinction  between  the  subject-matter  of  physics 
and  that  of  metaphysics  is  identical  with  the  distinction  between 
what  appears  and  what  is.  This  Kant  has  "nettement  etablie," 
as  Ribot  puts  it,  following  Schopenhauer. ^  And,  inasmuch  as 
all  experience  is  'what  appears,'  i.  e.,  phenomenal,  the  thing-in- 
itself,  which  'is,'  is  unknowable;  and  hence  metaphysics,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  term,  is  impossible. 

Here  it  is  that  Schopenhauer  attempts  to  improve  upon  Kant, 
by  asserting  the  possibility  of  an  immanent  metaphysics,  a  meta- 
physics of  experience.  Philosophy,  he  says,  begins  where  science 
leaves  off,  it  takes  things  up  and  "treats  them  after  its  own 
method,  which  is  quite  distinct  from  the  method  of  science. "^ 
This  essential  difference  in  method  Schopenhauer  indicates  in  no 
vague  terms.  Science  is  concerned  with  the  systematic  connec- 
tion of  differences.  But  in  the  conative  consciousness  the  dif- 
ferences of  the  World  as  Idea  vanish  into  one  immediate  unity, 
and  scientific  knowledge  is  transmuted  into  a  consciousness  of 
will,  which  demands  no  explanation,  starts  from  nothing,  points 
to  nothing,  but  is  itself  an  unending  immediate  striving.  Scho- 
penhauer, therefore,  denies,  on  the  basis  of  Kant's  own  epistemo- 
logical  results,  the  possibility  of  metaphysics,  if  by  metaphysics 
is  meant  the  scientific  explanation  of  the  inmost  nature  of  the 
thing-in-itself  as  such,  considered  apart  from  its  manifestation 
in  consciousness.  But  he  emphatically  affirms  the  possibility  of 
a  metaphysics  of  experience,  in  terms  of  its  completest  and  most 
immediate,  i.  e.,  most  real  manifestation.  Will. 

In  this  sense,  then,  Schopenhauer  asserts  that  his  own  meta- 
physics of  Will  is  the  key  to  the  world-riddle.  His  test  of  the 
metaphysical  '  realness '  of  any  phase  of  experience  is  in  terms  of 
a  unity  which  absorbs  multiplicity.  This  unity,  however,  is  not 
the  result  of  the  abstracting  process  of  conception,  but,  in  contrast 
to  the  mediate  character  of  all  thought,  is  concrete,  i.  e.,  imme- 
diately present  in  consciousness.  Schopenhauer  seeks  his  ulti- 
mate reality  in  some  specific  aspect  of  experience,  or  rather  in 

^La  philosophie  de  Schopenhauer,  Paris,  1890,  p.  35. 
2G..  I,  p.  128;  H.K.,  I,  p.  107. 


72  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

some  one  sort  of  experience,  in  which,  as  in  the  apex  of  the  cone, 
all  the  various  radii  may  somehow  vanish  and  be  lost  in  one  un- 
differentiated unity.  The  '  real '  is  conceived  by  him  as  opposed 
to  and  contradistinguished  from  the  rest  of  experience,  which  is 
thereby  declared  illusory.  The  ultimate  unity  is  possible,  on 
Schopenhauer's  basis,  only  by  means  of  the  erasure  of  the 
organized  multiplicity  of  phenomena.  Reality  is  not  truly  re- 
vealed by  its  phenomenal  appearance;  rather  is  the  World  as  Idea 
the  fleeting  shadow  of  the  Real,  its  veil  of  Maya.  All  the  organi- 
zation and  coherence  implied  in  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Rea- 
son avail  us  nothing  in  the  solution  of  the  ultimate  problems  of 
experience.  To  learn  metaphysics,  we  must  unlearn  science: 
this  is  the  spirit  of  Schopenhauer's  theory  of  reality. 

The  result  of  such  a  conception  of  metaphysics  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  reality  now  recognized  as  Will,  is  not  difficult  to 
foresee.  We  know  ourselves  as  willing  in  our  separate  acts  of 
striving.  But  it  is  precisely  this  our  knowledge  of  the  conative 
that  introduces  the  element  of  multiplicity  and  makes  impossible 
the  complete  metaphysical  unity.  Our  consciousness  of  willing 
is  metaphysically  'real,'  not  by  virtue  of  its  being  conscious,  but 
in  spite  of  it, — by  virtue  of  its  being  Will.  The  Will-Reality 
as  such,  the  metaphysical  kernel  of  the  universe,  is  not  in  time, 
because  it  absorbs  all  multiplicity  in  itself.  Consciousness,  in- 
evitably temporal  in  character,  is  itself  a  mere  accident  of  the 
metaphysical  Real.  The  ultimate  thing-in-itself  is  non-temporal, 
unconscious,  irrational,  free.  "The  will  in  itself  is  without  con- 
sciousness, and  remains  so  in  the  greater  part  of  its  phenomena. 
The  secondary  world  of  idea  must  be  added,  in  order  that  it 
may  become  conscious  of  itself."^  Will  is  the  prius,  the  Welt- 
princip;  vov<;  is  secondary,  intellect  is  the  posterius,  a  derivation 
and  a  mere  appearance  of  the  thing-in-itself.  To  urge  the 
primacy  of  the  intellect  over  the  will,  is  therefore  an  "enormous 
irpuiTov  \pev8os  and  fundamental  vampov  Tr/aore/oov.''^ 

"It  is  the  unconscious  will,"  Schopenhauer  insists,  "which 
constitutes  the  reality  of  things,  and  its  development  must  have 

»G.,  II,  pp.  323-324;  H.K.,  III,  p.  12. 
2G.,  II,  p.  230;  H.K.,  II,  p.  409. 


EXPERIENCE   AND   REALITY.  71 

advanced  very  far  before  it  finally  attains,  in  the  animal  con- 
sciousness, to  the  idea  and  intelligence;  so  that,  according  to  me, 
thought  appears  at  the  very  last."^  This  position  leads  Schopen- 
hauer to  materialistic  excesses.  The  whole  world  of  perception 
and  conception,  of  body  and  matter,  which  he  formerly  regarded 
as  intellectual  in  character,  he  now  describes  in  terms  of  the  bodily 
organism.^  The  intellect  is  reduced  to  a  tertiary  position,  being 
the  instrument  necessitated  by  a  complete  organism,  which  is 
secondary  and  is  itself  the  embodiment  of  the  one  and  only 
Prius,  the  blind  unconscious  Will.  The  intellect  is  accordingly 
a  function  of  the  brain,  which,  again,  is  the  will-to-perceive-and- 
think  objectified,  just  as  the  stomach  is  the  embodiment  of  the 
will-to-digest,  the  hand,  of  the  will-to-grasp,  the  generative 
organs,  of  the  will-to-beget,  and  so  on.  "The  whole  nervous 
system  constitutes,  as  it  were,  the  antennae  of  the  will,  which  it 
stretches  towards  within  and  without."^ 

The  relation  in  which  the  development  of  knowledge  stands 
to  the  gradual  objectification  of  the  Will  is  conceived  by  Scho- 
penhauer with  curious  inconsistency.  In  this  respect,  there  are 
some  apparent  differences  in  point  of  view  between  certain  pas- 
sages in  Schopenhauer's  earlier  and  later  works;  but  there  seems 
to  be  no  sufficient  ground  for  maintaining  any  fundamental 
change  of  attitude  on  Schopenhauer's  part.  Schopenhauer  might 
seem  to  hold  two  fundamentally  opposite  positions.  On  the 
one  hand,  he  says:  "The  organ  of  intelligence,  the  cerebral  sys- 
tem, together  with  all  the  organs  of  sense,  keep  pace  with  the 
increasing  wants  and  the  complication  of  the  organism."*  This 
conclusion  follows  logically  from  Schopenhauer's  theory  of  the 
absolute  bondage  of  intelligence;  but  it  does  not  account  for  the 
obvious  facts  of  consciousness.  Is  the  highest  development  of 
intelligence  always  accompanied  by  a  corresponding  intensity  of 
'will,'  in  Schopenhauer's  sense  of  that  term?  How  is  the  'dis- 
interestedness' of  thought  at  all  possible  on  such  a  basis?     Scho- 

iG..  II,  pp.  314-315;  H.K.,  III.  p.  2. 

2 Schopenhauer's  'physiological-psychological'  method,  which  here  manifests 
itself  in  terms  so  extreme,  is  nevertheless  implied  in  his  very  starting-point,  «.  e., 
in  his  distinction  between  perception  and  conception.    Cf.  Richter,  op.  cil.,  pp.  139  f. 

3G.,  II,  p.  299;  H.K.,  II,  p.  482. 

*G.,  II,  p.  237;  H.K.,  II,  p.  416. 


74  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

penhauer,  evidently  realizing  the  difficulty  of  the  situation, 
seems  to  shift  his  position.  The  gradual  objectification  of  the 
Will,  he  says,  is  accompanied  by  a  gradual  'loosening'  of  the 
intellect  from  its  will-ground.  In  the  course  of  its  development, 
the  intelligence  gradually  obtains  freedom  from  the  brute  will- 
impulse,  and  evolves  an  ideal  world  of  its  own,  a  world  of  knowl- 
edge, subject  to  universal  laws  of  nature.  This  is  the  World  as 
Idea,  which  Schopenhauer  regards  as  at  once  the  manifestation 
and  the  very  antithesis  of  the  World  as  Will.  But  the  intellect 
"may,  in  particular  exceptionally  favoured  individuals,  go  so  far 
that,  at  the  moment  of  its  highest  ascendancy,  the  secondary  or 
knowing  part  of  consciousness  detaches  itself  altogether  from  the 
willing  part,  and  passes  into  free  activity  for  itself."^  Thus,  in 
the  man  of  genius,  "knowledge  can  deliver  itself  from  this 
bondage,  throw  off  its  yoke,  and,  free  from  all  the  aims  of  will, 
exist  purely  for  itself,  simply  as  a  clear  mirror  of  the  world. "^ 
This  is  the  aesthetic  knowledge  of  the  Platonic  Ideas,  a  unique 
consciousness  of  unity,  different  alike  from  the  metaphysical 
unity  of  the  Will  and  from  the  abstract  unity  of  conception. 

No  discussion  of  the  problems  raised  by  Schopenhauer's 
Theory  of  Art  seems  to  be  called  for  here,  inasmuch  as  it  has 
no  direct  bearing  upon  his  criticism  of  Kant.  It  should  be 
noted,  however,  that  Schopenhauer  finds  himself  obliged  to 
reassert  the  autonomy  of  the  intellect,  which  his  metaphysic 
has  put  under  the  bondage  of  the  ultimate  Will.  This  autonomy 
of  the  intellect,  in  the  passionless  contemplation  of  works  of  art, 
is,  nevertheless,  only  a  passing  phase.  The  real  solution  of  the 
world-riddle  is  stated  by  Schopenhauer,  not  in  aesthetic,  but  in 
ethical  terms.  The  liberation  of  intelligence  from  the  tyrant 
Will  becomes  complete  and  final  only  when  the  will  is  denied  in 
the  supreme  act  of  self-renunciation.  This  denial  of  the  will, 
to  be  sure,  involves  the  cessation  of  consciousness,  the  total 
effacement  of  all  phenomenal  multiplicity,  and  the  sinking  into 
the  nothingness  of  Nirvana.  Enlightened  by  intelligence,  the 
will  of  man  may  be  led  to  realize  the  brute-like  character  of  its 

iG..  II,  p.  238;  H.K.,  II.  p.  417- 
'G.,  I,  p.  214;  H.K.,  I,  p.  199- 


EXPERIENCE  AND   REALITY.  75 

nature,  and,  directing  itself  against  itself,  achieve  its  own  self- 
annihilation.  The  denial  of  the  will  is  really  the  denial  of  its 
striving  towards  multiplicity;  it  is  the  denial  of  that  impulse 
in  it  which  leads  to  its  objectification  in  phenomena, — the  denial 
of  the  will-to-self-perpetuation,  of  the  will-to-become-manifest, 
of  the  will-to-live.  This  is  what  Schopenhauer  means  when  he 
says,  at  the  end  of  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea:  "We  freely  ac- 
knowledge that  what  remains  after  the  entire  abolition  of  will 
is  for  all  those  who  are  still  full  of  will  certainly  nothing;  but, 
conversely,  to  those  in  whom  the  will  has  turned  and  has  denied 
itself,  this  our  world,  which  is  so  real,  with  all  its  suns  and  milky 
ways — is  nothing."^ 

How  are  the  seemingly  incompatible  elements  of  this  many- 
sided  philosophy  to  be  reconciled?  Phenomenalistic  idealism 
and  voluntaristic  materialism,  eesthetic  quietism  and  ethical 
nihilism,  are  advocated  one  after  another;  and,  while  the  criticism 
of  Kant's  principles  often  lays  bare  the  concealed  inconsistencies 
of  the  Critical  system,  the  solutions  ofifered  are  as  often  inade- 
quate. Is  not  the  real  explanation  of  the  situation  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  Schopenhauer  is  not  the  true  successor  of  Kant 
at  all?  Instead  of  being  a  neo-rationalist,  as  Kant,  on  the  whole, 
remained,  he  is  fundamentally  an  irrationalist,  so  far  as  his 
attitude  towards  ultimate  reality  is  concerned.  He  is  keen  in 
perceiving  and  criticising  Kant's  confusion  of  various  aspects 
and  elements  of  experience;  but,  instead  of  tracing  their  imma- 
nent organic  unity,  which  Kant  imperfectly  realizes  and  formu- 
lates, he  goes  so  far,  in  almost  every  case,  as  to  assert  their  actual 
separation.  This  was  seen  to  be  true  of  his  treatment  of  per- 
ception and  conception,  understanding  and  reason.  Instead  of 
recognizing  their  unity  in  the  concrete  process  of  knowledge, 
Schopenhauer  dogmatically  separates  them  in  a  scholastic  man- 
ner, thus  substituting  a  lucidly  wrong  theory  for  Kant's  con- 
fusedly right  one.  Similarly,  in  the  case  of  the  categories, 
Schopenhauer  rightly  shows  the  artificiality  of  Kant's  'deduc- 
tion'; but,  while  correctly  insisting  upon  the  unitary  character 
-of  the  organization  of  experience,  he  expresses  this  unitary  char- 

iG..  I.  p.  527;  H.K.,  I,  p.  532. 


76  SCHOPENHAUER'S   CRITICISM  OF  KANT. 

acter  in  terms  of  one  category  for  every  'kind'  of  knowledge: 
causa  essendi,  fiendi,  agendi,  cognoscendi.  He  fails  to  realize  the 
essentially  instrumental  character  of  all  categories,  and  the  ideal 
nature  of  the  reality  which  they  interpret.  Thus,  in  his  criticism 
of  the  'Transcendental  Dialectic,'  while  clearly  showing  the  im- 
possibility of  expressing  the  nature  of  the  thing-in-itself  in  terms 
of  the  mechanical  categories,  he  misses  what,  after  all,  is  the  chief 
result  of  the  'Dialectic,' — the  truth,  namely,  that  the  mechan- 
ical categories  are  not  the  only  categories,  that  experience  has 
phases  which  demand  explanation  in  terms  of  teleological  prin- 
ciples of  organization.  Schopenhauer  points  out  the  confusion 
and  error  of  Kant's  proposed  transcendental  solution  of  the 
problem  of  the  thing-in-itself  by  means  of  the  postulates  of 
Practical  Reason,  and  correctly  insists  on  finding  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  experience  in  terms  of  experience  itself.  But, 
instead  of  showing  that  the  mechanical  categories  cannot  by 
themselves  embody  the  ultimate  solution,  and  therefore  need 
to  be  supplemented  by  other  organizing  principles,  Schopenhauer 
declares  the  causally  connected  world  to  be  a  world  of  mere 
appearance  and  illusion,  and  proceeds  to  seek  reality  in  some 
other  sphere  of  experience.  He  finds  this  metaphysical  Real  in 
the  conative  experience.  Here,  again,  had  Schopenhauer  satis- 
fied himself  with  asserting  the  deeper  significance  of  the  conative, 
as  compared  with  the  merely  cognitive  experience,  his  position 
would  have  been  fairly  defensible.  But  he  goes  on  to  deny  of 
his  Will-Reality  everything  which  he  had  affirmed  of  the  World 
as  Idea, — with  the  result  that  the  conative,  no  longer  dynamically 
rational,  is  described  as  ceaseless  irrational  striving.  In  short, 
Schopenhauer's  World  as  Idea  and  World  as  Will  are  at  least  as 
incompatible  philosophically  as  Kant's  two  worlds  of  phenomena 
and  noumena. 

Thus  Schopenhauer  fails  to  profit  by  his  own  criticism  of 
Kant.  He  censures  his  master  for  attempting  to  explain  the 
world  of  experience  by  reference  to  a  transcendent  world  of 
things-in-themselves;  but  he  does  not  realize  that  it  is  just  as 
futile  to  attempt  an  ultimate  explanation  of  experience  in  terms 
of  any  one  of  its  many  aspects.     In  what  sense  can  the  'Will- 


EXPERIENCE   AND   REALITY.  77 

Reality'  be  consistently  described  as  the  inmost  essence  of  ex- 
perience, when  it  negates  essential  features  of  the  only  experience 
we  know?  The  Will  is  of  paramount  significance  for  experience; 
no  philosopher  can  ignore  it  without  making  his  system  static, 
fatally  lacking  in  concreteness  and  vitality.  But,  if  taken  in 
abstract  isolation  as  a  hypostatized  Weltprincip,  it  is  not  only 
incapable  of  explaining  all  the  problems  of  experience,  but  is 
itself  quite  meaningless  for  any  consistent  epistemology.  Expe- 
rience must  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  its  own  self-organizing 
totality.  In  the  solution  of  its  problems  we  can  ignore  no  one 
of  >?  elements  or  aspects.  Cognition  is  an  essential  aspect  of 
e.-perience,  but  cognition  is  not  all ;  this  is  the  lesson  to  be  learned 
from  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  3ind  especially  from  the  'Dialec- 
tic' The  same  is  true  of  Will.  Will  finds  its  meaning  only  in 
the  concrete  whole  of  experience,  only  in  relation  to  the  many 
factors  which  constitute  its  cosmic  process.  There  are  contrasts 
in  experience,  oppositions  and  antitheses;  but  ultimately  these 
must  be  capable  of  mutual  organization,  ultimately  experience 
must  be  unitary  and  intelligible.  This  is  the  only  basis  on  which 
any  consistent  philosophy  is  at  all  possible,  and  this  is  the  real 
significance  of  Kant's  epistemological  method.  Schopenhauer's 
philosophy,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  an  endless  conflict, 
in  which  now  one  aspect  of  experience,  now  another,  is  unduly 
emphasized  and  set  over  against  the  rest  of  experience.  His 
every  problem  is  stated  in  the  form  of  a  dilemma:  either  Per- 
ception or  Conception,  either  Understanding  or  Reason,  either 
Knowledge  or  Will,  either  Egoism  or  Self- Renunciation.  He 
never  fully  comprehended  the  immanent  unity  of  experience, 
in  reference  to  which  all  its  various  aspects  must  find  their  real 
significance.  And  this  is  the  fundamental  defect  of  his  philos- 
ophical system,  which  makes  him  incapable  of  grasping  the  real 
problems  of  Kant's  philosophy,  and  of  indicating  a  consistent 
method  for  their  solution. 


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